


Tithe

by WhenasInSilks



Series: Tithe [1]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Dark Jareth, Disaffected teenage Sarah, Except not except actually though, F/M, Jareth is Satan??, Recreational Drug Use, Sarah puts away her childish things, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Things are not as they seem, Violence, YOU GUYZ I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS ONE, but now face to face, far more plot than may be considered desirable or becoming, frankly excessive amounts of worldbuilding, seeing through a glass darkly, vague euhemerism, what is being a hero even tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2018-06-09 17:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6917146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenasInSilks/pseuds/WhenasInSilks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A fair bargain then: a life for a death. Your death.”</p><p>Sarah recoils. “My— I’m not going to let you kill me!”</p><p>He grins—or at least, his lips curl back and bare his teeth. “Who said anything about killing you? It is not your dying I want, but your death.” His tone gentles, grows wheedling, but his eyes are feral. “Only give me your death and I will let you live out your mortal days in peace Aboveground. Grow and age and whither and die as you will, it matters not. But everything that comes after, from the moment your soul leaves your body until the last star burns out in the sky, will be mine.”</p><p>FairyDark!Jareth. Sarah-centric, at least at first. J/S because we are all garbage: toxic, beautiful garbage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Here Are We

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I barely even own the laptop I’m writing, much less the characters of Labyrinth. Except for the stuff I do own, like the scenarios and sentences and OCs. But I’ll share if you ask nicely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other day, I was listening to “A Children’s Crusade on Acid” by Margot & the Nuclear So-and-Sos (music aside, maybe the best song title/band name combo ever?). And maybe it was the fact that I’d been on a hardcore Laby-fic bender or the fact that this was the first non-Bowie album I’d listened to in two months, but I started making all these connections. First I noticed that the protagonist is named Sarah. From there it snowballed: “Woken from a dream? Abandoned by your mother? … The children lose their minds?? … Satan??? Satan’s TROUSERS?!?!?”
> 
> Without going full-on conspiracy nut (they’re an American band, so why would they talk about trousers instead of pants unless they’re referencing the infamously tight trousers worn by Jareth who is played by David Bowie who is British?!?) it was clear to me that there was a story here, a story about disaffected teenage Sarah trying to make sense of a world half-magic and half-madness and the spectacularly be-trousered demi-Satanic tempter who is after her soul. This is that story, after a fashion. It will be heavily influenced by the MNSS album Not Animal as well as (of course) the music of David Bowie, among other things. You’ll never have to listen to the songs to understand the story, but if you’re curious, it might help establish the mood. Relevant songs will be cited at the end of each chapter.
> 
> Anyway, good job wading through all that authorish twaddle. I’m proud of you and you deserve a reward. Just a quick
> 
> TW for this chapter: recreational drug use
> 
> first, and off we go!
> 
> EDIT (6/29/2016): Updated to incorporate suggestions from my beta, the wonderful synthetic aesthetic! http://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticaesthetic/pseuds/syntheticaesthetic

**PART I: Quaaludes and Red Wine**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**Here Are We**

* * *

_Here are we, one magical moment_  
_Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven._  
_Bending sound…_

“Station to Station,” David Bowie.

* * *

Sarah is lost. She has known this for several minutes, though not continuously, because it’s hard to know anything for very long when her vision is smoke and slashes of colored light and the music shudders through her body like the voice of God. Nevertheless, by starts and jumps she becomes increasingly aware that the gleaming, gyrating, ecstatic bodies around her are not the _right_ gleaming, gyrating, ecstatic bodies. Or, at the least, not _her_ right gleaming, gyrating, ecstatic bodies. Which is _wrong_ but she can’t remember how or what to do about it and the effort of thinking is killing her high something _awful_ , so she gives it up for lost and throws herself back into the dance.

And maybe it’s the drugs, but she never knew dancing could feel like this, never knew _anything_ could feel like this. The past is darkness and darkness stretches ahead but as long as she _doesn’t stop_ , as long as she keeps moving, remains part of this wild, wriggling, many-limbed animal this moment will last forever and she’ll never fall. Because now she’s soaring high above the crowd, above the ocean of hands and faces and bright clothing. _Forget_ , says the music, _forget_ , and yes and _yes_ and it swells before her and breaks and as she is swept under there is the moment where the noise of the crowd and the music meet in a rush of white noise almost like silence, and in that silence she hears her name.

_Sarah._

Suddenly, she remembers that she is lost and alone and higher than a kite, and that doesn’t seem like such a good thing any more. She turns, blindly, and stumbles into the crowd.

_Crack._

A white burst of pain on her forehead. Her vision goes funny and she lurches to one side, losing her purchase. She begins to fall, only to be caught by the arms and held. She stays like that for a second, pitched forward, a dead weight as she pieces it all together—her throbbing forehead, the sudden fall. She must have collided with something—someone? And then—

She focuses on the hands still supporting her. At least, she thinks they’re hands from the way they curl around her arms, although the texture is _wrong_ somehow, both too smooth and too clinging. From the maybe-hands she tracks her gaze to a pair of probably-arms and finally fixes upon the face in front of her. She sees: eyes like black pits in a ghost-white mask, topped with a bloody crown.

She blinks, and the face resolves itself into round, dark glasses, a pale face, and a head of spiky, implausibly red hair.

She steadies herself, and the maybe-hands relax their grip and fall away. One of them rises again, gingerly touching the mouth of the boy in front of her. The hand is preternaturally white, even against the paleness of his face. He stares at the fingertips, then smiles and turns them around to show her.

She focuses on the hand and understands. “Gloves!” she exclaims.

Whether or not he can hear her over the music and the crowd is doubtful, but he seems to find her response satisfactory. He grins and shrugs a little and moves his lips: _No harm done_ , perhaps? He gestures from himself to her and mouths a question: _What about you?_

She starts to nod and is rewarded with another flash of pain. His smile slips a little and he raises his hand to her forehead. She flinches from the touch, but the pain is gone.

“I’m all right,” she says, flashing a weak smile and giving him a slightly shaky thumbs up. “Thanks—and sorry!”

He nods, and mouths another word, holding up a finger. _Wait._ He starts to speak again, then cuts himself off with a wry shake of the head. He leans forward and whispers in her ear, and there’s something so oddly familiar about his voice and its closeness and his hot breath on her neck that he’s already bent down and risen up again by the time she manages to process his words:

“I think you dropped something.”

He raises his white-gloved hand before her. In it is something round and translucent and glinting with many-colored lights like—like a soap bubble or… The feeling of déjà vu increases. Something is stirring at the back of her mind but she can’t quite seem to—

She steps back, treading on the heel of the dancer behind her. “That’s not mine,” she says.

He quirks a curiously slanted eyebrow at her. The next question she understands perfectly: “You’re sure?”

She says nothing.

He shrugs lightly. “My mistake.” She blinks. His hand is empty. His lips curve upward in a strange smile and he leans forward. “Dance with me,” he breathes.

The fluttering of memory increases. She furrows her brow, trying to focus. The effort of thinking and of staying still so long makes her breath catch and her vision swim. The boy dissolves into a series of discrete images. She sees: a white column of throat. The glint of an earring. The sharp jut of a cheekbone. The strangely sensual mouth bent into a smile that makes her pulse race and her stomach queasy. There is something _wrong_ about all of this but she can’t quite… Above and behind his dark spectacles, his gaze is unwavering.

She tries to speak. Has her mouth always been this dry? She raises a hand to her head. There had been a question, hadn’t there?

And still that fixed gaze—that queer, unsettling smile. His lips part:

“Sarah.”

 _How_ _does he—_ But he’s lifted his head, looking behind her now as the voice comes again, high enough and loud enough to cut through the fog of noise, and unmistakably female.

His mouth turns down suddenly, then relaxes into a half-smile. He straightens, turns to go, and then, as if on impulse, leans forward again and _blows_ something straight into her face.

She coughs, her vision filled with a thousand glittering points of light.

And suddenly the noise and the heat of the crowded warehouse come roaring back—when had they gone?—and someone has grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her roughly around and she’s being half-throttled by a pair of skinny arms and the mingled scent of sweat, perfume, and cheap liquor. Alisse.

“Oh my _god_ , Sarah, we’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where _were_ you?” Alisse pulls back a little, peering over Sarah’s shoulder. “And _who_ was _that_?” She giggles and then stares into Sarah’s flushed face and shell-shocked expression. “Good stuff, isn’t it? Strong. Told you Kyle DeLuca knows his shit.” She giggles again, then gives a start and begins fishing around in her handbag. She thrusts a bottle into Sarah’s unresisting hands.

“Drink this. It’ll clear your head.” And frowns. “Why is your face all sparkly?”

* * *

The bottle, as it turns out, is water, lukewarm but glorious, and it _does_ clear her head—perhaps too much.

“Isn’t this _fun_?” Alisse screeches into her ear twenty minutes later.

Sarah winces. “Yeah,” she says, “really fun.”

Alisse pushes her back and stares into her face. “Whassamatter?” she demands.

It’s a good thing she’s given up on that whole acting shtick, Sarah thinks wryly, if she can’t even fool someone as totally off her tits as Alisse.

“Nothing!” she yells back.

Alisse gives her a shake. “What _is_ it?”

Sarah caves. “Doesn’t last long, does it? This— whatever the hell you got off of Kyle DeLuca. Strong though,” she adds, conciliatory.

Alisse stares at her wide-eyed, then claps her hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, you mean you’re _coming down_?”

“Kind of, yeah.” The understatement of the decade.

Alisse shakes her head vigorously. “No, no, _no_ —we’ve got to _fix_ that. Kyle? Has anyone seen that asshole Kyle DeLuca?”

“It’s cool—” Sarah starts, but Alisse has already pounced.

“Kyle! Hey, Kyle! Got any more of that K?”

Kyle DeLuca unwraps himself from the girl he’d been dancing with. Sarah can’t but notice that the girl slips off the minute he turns his back. “Yeah, sure,” he says, patting his pockets. “What, coming down already?”

“Not me. _Sarah_.”

Kyle’s head jerks up. “Sarah?” His eyes meet Sarah’s and his face splits into a mad grin. “Come to think of it, I’ve got something better than this. Just hang on a second.” And he’s off, pushing his way through the crowd.

Alisse pulls an impressed face. “Pulling out all the stops for you! Anything I should know about?” She elbows Sarah conspiratorially.

Sarah stares at the spot where Kyle disappeared. She hadn’t liked Kyle’s smile. Then again, she hadn’t liked glove-boy’s smile either. Maybe she just doesn’t like smiles in general. She stares down at Alisse, trying to put the theory to the test, but Alisse’s mouth droops into a frown to mirror Sarah’s own.

“What?”

Sarah shakes her head. “Nothing. I’m just—I’m just going to grab a smoke first.”

“What? But he’s coming right back!”

“I won’t be long. I just need the air.” It’s as if she’d spoken the words into being, because suddenly she does need air, madly, desperately—air and space and quiet and solitude.

Alisse bites her lip. “Want me to come with?”

“No!” Sarah says, too quickly. “No, it’s cool. Just don’t move around too much. I’ll come find you in a few.”

* * *

The alleyway outside the warehouse is fairly dotted with slumped and exhausted ravers, but Sarah finds, rounding the corner, that the back is all but deserted. She slips into an alcove and allows herself to collapse, pressing her face into the wall and relishing the roughness of the bricks on her skin. After a moment, she straightens, fetches out her rolling papers and tobacco and sets to work. It’s soothing, the ritual of it, here in the relative peace of the back lot, under the untaxing glow of a gibbous moon. She can still hear the music, but it’s distant now, the deep bass of the music muffled by brick and concrete, and apart from a few snatches of laughter and conversation carrying from the alley, it’s quiet. She breathes deeply and sticks a hand into her pocket for her lighter.

And then into her other pocket.

“ _Shit_.”

Someone is rounding the corner.

“Hey, you got a light?”

The figure pauses, backlit in the light from the alley. Sarah squints, struggling to make out it out.

The reply is unhurried, amused. “Depends. What will you give me for it?”

The figure comes forward, into the moonlight. Glove-boy. Sarah stares at him, studying him more closely now, gauging a potential threat. He’s not particularly tall—she knows that from before—but slender enough to appear so from a distance. As he approaches, she can see that the red of his hair is just dye now—the overgrown roots are pale blond. He’s dressed appropriately enough—Doc Martins, baggy jeans, a black leather vest over a pale chest and glowing neon bracelets on his wrists. Yet there’s something… _off_ about him. The boots are too polished, catching the moonlight. She’s seen dozens of pairs of white gloves tonight, but never ones of perfectly fitted leather. And the pendent around his neck— where has she seen that symbol before?

“I’m sorry?” she says slowly.

“Are you?” His teeth flash, looking strangely pointed in the moonlight, and she may not know how she feels about smiles in general but she knows they don’t usually make her feel like _this_ , hot and restless and breathless and _twitchy_. “What for?”

Something else she notices: he stands wrong. Too relaxed, too poised, too arrogantly confident in his own skin. Boys in Doc Martins don’t hold themselves like dissolute eighteenth century aristocrats. His dark glasses are gone. He shifts slightly and she catches a glimpse of his eyes for the first time, not long enough even to tell their color but long enough for a frisson of fear to creep down her spine. _Something here is not right_.

“I meant,” she says carefully, pulling away from the wall and putting a pace between them. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.” The memory is almost free now, thrashing and cawing and beating its wings against the weakening bars of its cage.

“Oh, a trifle for a trifle. You want something that I have. I’m willing to trade for it. What will you offer me? A lock of hair, perhaps? An hour of your life?” He pauses. “A dream?”

She snorts and turns away. “Look, dude, I don’t want it _that_ —” She stops as her ears catch up with her. “What did you—”

She turns and doesn’t need to see the crystal rolling idly across his fingertips to _know_ , because suddenly she’s seeing double. On the surface, a cocky teenager with a bad dye-job, dressed in upmarket rave-chic. But underneath—it’s like looking at a reflection in a still pool and seeing movement below. A face beneath a face. As she watches, it swims to the surface—an older face—a man’s face, though not a human one—with a narrow, aquiline nose and a shock of gloriously ragged blond hair, complete with—yes, it was all there: gloves, pendant, leather riding boots, and the most _unambiguous_ trousers Sarah has ever seen.

“Surprise,” he says softly, fondly, maliciously.

And Sarah’s mind—unlike her suddenly useless legs—is racing, racing and getting nowhere because _this isn’t supposed to happen_. He isn’t supposed to be here, and certainly not like this. That isn’t how the story goes. He’s gone off script. Shit. _Shit_.

“Goblin King,” she says, not a greeting— _naming_ him.

He inclines his head. “Just so. Now, I believe there was a small matter of a barter?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Man, remember drugs? I miss drugs. But also not at all. Don’t do drugs, kids.
> 
> History note: I was alive when this chapter takes place (1990) but barely. I’ve done a little research into late 80s/early 90s youth culture, but probably not enough, so if you lived/were a youth in that period, sorry for any glaring anachronisms and feel free to correct me!
> 
> Songs in my head and while writing this chapter:
> 
> “Station to Station,” by David Bowie.
> 
> “A Children’s Crusade on Acid,” by Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos.
> 
> “Broadripple is Burning,” by Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos.
> 
> If you’re enjoying this and want me to keep writing it, please do drop me a line and let me know because I have absolutely no way of knowing otherwise. You are beautiful enablers and I love you all. 
> 
> XO
> 
> Silks
> 
> Crossposted with ff.net.


	2. Well, I'll Be Damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah tries to figure out what a guy like the Goblin King is doing at a party like this. The Goblin King is less than forthcoming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Today’s post brought to you early by … alcoholism! Hangover Saturday = productive fanfic writing Saturday. I’ve edited this down a lot, but it still may be a bit overwritten (sorry!). I haven’t taken on a writing project like this in ages, so expect things to be a little shaky while I learn it all again. It also occurs to me that this is why betas are a thing? So I am working on acquiring a beta for the next chapter. In the meantime, any and all critiques are welcome so long as they are (a) constructive, and (b) specific.
> 
> If you wanted a more specific visual reference for Jareth’s glamour in the previous chapter, think David Bowie as Halloween Jack except early 90s raver rather than mid 70s glam (and with eyebrows). And if you haven’t memorised every look/persona ever assumed by David Bowie, go to google and type in “David Bowie Halloween Jack.” You know, the one where he’s flipping his hair, and his electric guitar (colour coordinated with both his hair and his trousers how does he do that??) is very deliberately positioned in just such a way as to perfectly frame his crotch? Yeah. You’re welcome. Feel free to take a moment to let that image sink in before proceeding with this chapter.
> 
> EDIT (6/29/2016): Updated to incorporate suggestions from my beta, the wonderful synthetic aesthetic! http://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticaesthetic/pseuds/syntheticaesthetic

**Chapter 2**

**Well, I’ll Be Damned**

* * *

_Now_ _, don’t be fooled by fools who promise you_  
_The world and all that glitters—more fool you._

“Prisoner of Love,” Tin Machin _e._

* * *

_Well, I’ll be damned:_ _  
_ _Here comes your ghost again._

“Diamonds and Rust,” Joan Baez.

* * *

A peculiar twist of his fingers, and the crystal in his hand is now a bright flame. He cups it tenderly in his palm, then tips it down his outstretched hand. It comes to rest balanced between the tips of his index and middle finger.

For a moment, Sarah gapes at it, dancing and flickering before her. She looks up. The Goblin King is watching her, his head tipped to one side—a curiously avian posture. She had once thought him almost human. She won’t make that mistake again.

“You’re kidding,” she manages.

She’s not actually sure whether she’s speaking to _him_ , or to some kind of slow-acting chemical that has spent the past hour patiently digging through her psyche in search of her deepest, most secret, most muddled and disturbing and ambiguous and bat-shit fucking _insane_ memory and struck _gold_ (and assuming she makes it through the night with her sanity intact she is going to _kill_ Kyle DeLuca), _or_ to the entire damn _universe_ , because she’s due to start college in less than a month and a half, because it’s been _four years_ of confusion and self-doubt and repression and reinvention— _four damn years_ to fix everything he broke just by _existing_ —and now he shows up out of the blue when she’s underdressed and out of place and cut off from her friends by thick walls, three hundred yards of tightly-packed dancefloor, and a couple of potent doses of Special K.

Except… she can see the shadows cast by the flame on his outstretched finger, can hear the silk of his shirt rustling in the light breeze, so she can’t be hallucinating. And even she were hallucinating, she’s progressed to thinking in complex hypotheticals so it can’t be the drugs (she’s _still_ going to kill Kyle DeLuca). And even if it were the drugs, even if he’s just a waking dream, a memory, a ghost made flesh (and silk and leather and _teeth_ ), that doesn’t mean he isn’t _real_.

And she’s always known, hasn’t she, that it wasn’t over. Even through the long, stifling nights staring out the window at a sky full of stars that no one could move. Even through the sullen, dragging days when she hated the magic and longed for it in equal measure. Even when she told herself it was all a dream. Even when she believed it. (And really, why not here? Of all the places in the world for their paths to cross, what could be more appropriate than somewhere where half the people are blissfully lost inside their own heads and the other half are blissfully lost inside their own _bliss_? This is just one roofied peach away from his kind of party.)

He watches her, hand outstretched. His index and middle finger still proffer the flame, but his ring and pinkie fingers have relaxed, curling back towards his palm, almost as if he’s beckoning her. In one gesture, an offering and a summons. How _like_ him. Apart from that, if he’s moved at all, if he’s so much as _breathed_ , she can’t tell. The stillness seems as natural to him as it would be unnatural in anyone—any _thing_ else.

So she looks right into his eyes and says it again, flatly, loading her tone with as much contempt and incredulity as bravado can muster: “You’re kidding.”

“The bargain is not to your liking?” There’s nothing in his tone to indicate mockery, but a small smile is playing about the corners of his lips. _Smug bastard_.

Sarah lifts her chin. The Goblin King isn’t the only one capable of posturing. Holding his gaze, she opens her hand and lets the cigarette fall. Then, almost daintily, she lifts her foot and grinds it into the concrete.

His eyes narrow ever so slightly, though the smile remains. “No matter,” he says, and closes his hand with a snap, crushing the flame from existence.

She flinches, silently curses herself for it, and squares her shoulders. “What—” she begins, voice cracking. That bottle of water suddenly seems a long time ago—years ago, decades even. _I’m not afraid. I’m just dehydrated_. She clears her throat slightly and licks her lips. “What are you doing here?”

He unfastens his gaze from where it had suddenly fixed on her mouth. The eyes he raises to meet hers are amused, though seconds before they had been… something else. “I am _doing_ my _job_ , Sarah.”

She stumbles back a step. “You’re here to steal someone away?”

He rolls his eyes. “Not _steal_. Despite your repeated and somewhat melodramatic claims to the contrary, I only take what is given to me. It is the custom of my kind.”

 _Of all the people to talk of melodrama! Mr. ‘Fear me, love me, do as I say_ —’ And hang on, _‘of his kind’?_ She opens her mouth to ask, then snaps it shut. No. _Bad Sarah_. She won’t let him draw her in. “Then what are you doing here?”

“As I said, I am do—”

She corrects herself, raising her voice to speak over him. “Why have you come _here_ to do your job, whatever it is?”

His eyes narrow dangerously at the interruption. She resists the urge to retreat another step. She saw that look cross his face once before, in the Labyrinth. Right before he stole three of her hours and set the Cleaners on her.

But he simply says, almost pleasantly, “A question of rather more moment. What would you give me for the answer, I wonder?” He laughs at her scowl, and leans a shoulder against the alcove wall. “But I’ve always been generous where you are concerned, and it wouldn’t do to break with tradition. I have come because one of these mortal revelers is to die tonight.”

And now Sarah understands what people mean when they talk about blood running cold—this wash of chill horror that numbs and pains and freezes her where she stands. “Who?” she asks, her tongue thick and heavy in her mouth. Her voice sounds strangely muffled—distant—to her own ears. She says it again, louder. “ _Who_?”

The Goblin King regards his gloved fingers and says nothing.

She stamps her foot. “And you’re here to—what? Kill them?”

He flexes his fingers, furling and unfurling them, turning his palm this way and that, seemingly fascinated by his own capacity for movement.

“ _Save_ them?”

His hand begins a rhythmic, undulating sort of twist, as if he is rolling an invisible crystal. “In a sense,” he says.

Sarah positively snarls in frustration. “Which is it? And what does that mean, ‘in a sense’?” These last words are spoken in a mincing mockery of the Goblin King’s rich tones.

His brows snap together and his hand tightens into a fist, but he says nothing.

“Answer me, dammit!”

She had not known he could move that fast—had scarcely known that anything could move that fast. She trips over her own feet in her haste to retreat and the back of her head collides painfully with hard, unyielding brick.

And here he is before her, so damn close she hardly dares breathe. She presses herself into the wall behind her. He has scarcely half a foot’s advantage in height, but every inch of it is put to good use—at this distance, he positively _looms_.

“Have a care, Sarah,” he murmurs. “Or have you forgotten _to whom you speak_?” The last words twist into a snarl.

She blinks, trying to clear the spots dancing before her eyes. His face is bare inches from her. The heat of his breath against her skin is like the midsummer sun. How hot must his internal temperature be for his breath to burn like that? _Not human_.

She shuts her eyes, and sees landscapes of (pain) swirling brown and white flashes of ( _pain_ ) light. She swallows queasily. “I know exactly who I’m talking to, Goblin King,” she says—tries to say—but her voice comes out blurred and mumbled even to her own ears. _Wrong_ —her head is—her _head_ —

Her stomach clambers up into her chest as the wall shifts suddenly behind her, scratching her arms and back with ragged fingernails and catching at her hair. She opens her eyes muzzily and finds her gaze level with the Goblin King’s ribcage. Her knees tremble, lock, tremble again…

Above her, he makes some incomprehensible sound. Then, gloved hands slide under her arms, raising her, supporting her. One hand reaches around the back of her neck and cradles her bruised head, the other ghosting swiftly over the scrapes on her arms and back. Her face is almost against his chest and she feels something ever so gently brush the top of her head.

She jerks back, but he’s already pulling away and she finds that she can stand unsupported, that her vision is clear and her head no longer hurts.

“You—” she says, and stops. “You _healed_ me.” Her voice catches and she shivers, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, trying to efface the tingling remnants of his touch.

He has turned away from her, passing a gloved hand across his face, and leant his head against the opposite wall. His shoulders are hunched. “I’m sorry,” he says to the wall. “I forget, sometimes, how fragile you mortals are. My kind are more … resilient. Sarah—”

He turns to face her, mouth working as though he would say more but can think of nothing to say. She is taken aback by the _anguish_ in his eyes.

“Yeah,” she says, still struggling to process everything that’s happening, everything that _has_ happened. He’s here. He hurt her. He _healed_ her. He’s… _sorry_? Slowly, her hands cease their motion and she lets them drop to her sides. Part of her is furious—how _dare_ he look so broken when she was the one injured? But his posture is so slumped—so _defeated_ —that she can’t help but stand straighter in response. “No shit. Just… just don’t fucking do it again. Ever.”

“I swear it—”

“In _fact_ ,” she continues, gaining steam—she’ll give him _fragile_ , “maybe instead of slamming people into walls because they happen to get a little impatient with you, you could use your damn _words_ next time.”

At the words “next time,” his breath catches and he fixes her with a piercing look, but Sarah is frowning, still puzzling it all through. “You did that before. In the club. Touched my head and the pain went away and then when Alisse came—” Her eyes widen. “It was you! You sobered me up!”

The lingering tension in his face dissolves into a smirk.

“Come on, that shit was expensive!”

“I find,” he says, airily, “somewhat to my surprise, that I prefer our games when you are fully cognizant of them.”

“Fully… Christ, have you always talked like a—a _Dickens_ novel? And hang on—I thought you had no power over me!”

“As you say.”

“Then how did you…”

He is grinning fully now. “It’s within the remit of the Goblin King to cheat from time to time. Or had you forgotten?”

“No,” says Sarah wryly, a reluctant smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I really hadn’t.”

She stops for a moment, marveling at this strange moment of accord between them. If she had had any doubts that he was really there, this would have put an end to them—she could have dreamt up a dozen Goblin Kings, but it would never even have _occurred_ to her to imagine one capable of self-referential humor. His mismatched eyes sparkle in the moonlight, and she finds herself remembering, quite against her will, that she hadn’t always hated and feared him in the Labyrinth. There had been a moment, in a dream, when she had forgotten… When she had _forgotten_ …

Oh no.

“Someone’s going to die!” she exclaims, and the cold horror that sweeps through her once more at the recollection is swiftly followed by self-recrimination. How _could_ she forget?

For the briefest of seconds, his shoulders slump, and then they refigure themselves into that posture of arrogant ease that so infuriates her.

“And you’re here to—to save them? In a sense?”

“Correct,” he drawls.

She makes a sound of frustration. “Are you here to make sure they don’t die?”

“That is my intention.”

“And that’s different from saving them…how?”

He laughs shortly. “So many questions! But I find,” he says tightly, “that my generosity has reached its limits. What is the expression you mortals use? Ah, yes: no more free rides.”

Which means if she wants more information, she’ll have to give him something in return.

“All right,” she says, slowly, feeling a prickling of unease. _I can’t believe I’m about to say this_. “Let’s barter.” She looks up into his shark-toothed smile and doesn’t flinch. “You answer my questions and—what was it you asked for before? Well, I’m definitely not giving you any of my dreams. And I think you’ve taken enough of my hours already.” She pauses. “A lock of hair? I could do that.”

She’s low-balling him, of course—if he wanted a lock of hair just to light her damn cigarette, he’s almost certainly going to want more for answers to all her questions. So she’s astonished when he says, in a suspiciously off-handed tone, “That would be an… acceptable price.”

She narrows her eyes. “In return for you answering my questions _now_ , I’ll give you a lock of my hair, which I will choose and cut _myself_ , but only if you swear you won’t to use it to trap me or compel me or to use it against me in any way. And,” she adds, as an afterthought, “that you’re not asking for it because you intend for it be used to trap or compel me or used against me in any way.”

“Precious, you _wound_ me.”

“I’ll just bet,” she mutters. “That’s my offer, take it or leave it.”

He taps his chin, as if thinking it over. She’s nearly certain it’s a pose. Surely this couldn’t be what he’s been after all along? “I will answer your questions _now_ regarding my purpose here _tonight_ so long as it does not interfere with the performance of my duties. In return, you will cut for me a lock of your hair of _my_ choosing, which I swear I will not use to trap you or compel you or use against you in any way, nor do I intend for it to be thus used.”

She narrows her eyes further. “You’ll answer my questions _truthfully_.”

“I don’t tell lies,” he says, drawing himself up haughtily.

“No, but you do cheat.”

His mouth quirks. “Granted.”

“Then how do I know that you won’t cheat in keeping your oath?”

His lips thin. “I think you misunderstand the nature of oaths, Sarah.”

“Maybe. I think _you_ misunderstand just how little I intend to leave you any loopholes, Goblin King,” retorts the daughter of Robert Williams, attorney at law.

He makes a gesture of impatience. “I haven’t got all evening, Sarah. Time is short!”

She sets her jaw, stubborn.

They stare at one another for a long moment, and then he exhales in disgust, and drops to his knee before her. “I swear by blood and by starfire that I will use nothing you give as part of this bargain to trap or compel you or against you in any way, nor is it my intention or _desire_ that it be so used. May the earth disclaim me, the wind unmake me, and the salt sea take me if I lie.” He rises again. “Will _that_ satisfy your thrice-damned impertinent mistrust?”

She nods, swallows, and clears her throat. She had felt the power in his words as he spoke, felt the echoes as they passed through her, reverberating through some great, alien expanse of space. “Yeah,” she says, a bit hoarsely. “That’ll do.”

“Then say your right words and let us get on with things!”

Her right words? “I don’t—”

“Of _course_ not,” he says to the night, as if her ignorance is a personal affront. And then, with almost insulting patience: “This isn’t a wish, but a compact, Sarah. You need only speak the terms. I will pact them.”

She takes a breath. “You’ll answer my questions now about what you’re doing here tonight, so long as it doesn’t interfere with you doing your duties—answer my questions _truthfully_ ,” she adds, ignoring his scowl, “and in return, you can choose a lock of my hair and I’ll cut it and give it to you, as long as you keep to the terms of the oath you just made.”

“So pacted,” he says, instantly.

There’s a deep rumble and the ground trembles ever so slightly, though that might have just been the sudden increase in bass from inside the warehouse. Sarah shivers. She can feel that rumble in her _bones_. The Goblin King raises his right hand and snaps his fingers. The rumble and the music stop abruptly.

Sarah gives a start. “What the hell did you just do?” she demands.

“I’ve stopped time.”

Shit. _Shit_. “You have no power over me,” she reminds him, the words tripping off her tongue in embarrassing haste.

“No power except what you give me,” he corrects. “I believe our bargain was that I will answer your questions _so long as it doesn’t interfere with the performance of my duties_. I don’t have all night to satisfy your curiosity, Sarah. This way, we can converse at leisure. No, don’t sulk,” he chides, looking intolerably pleased with himself. “It was unbecoming enough in a girl—far more so in a grown woman.”

 _Of all the_ —Sarah grits her teeth. She can’t let him goad her—can’t let him _distract_ her. “Who here is going to die tonight?”

“No one, if I have my way.”

She grinds her teeth further. “Whose _life_ have you come here to save?”

“One of the revelers—ravers, I think you call them.”

Okay, so either he’s yanking her chain, or he doesn’t like her current line of questioning. She presses on. “ _Which one_ , Jareth?”

His head snaps up. “Who gave you that name?” His voice is low, filled with a dangerous intensity.

 _Interesting_. “Sorry, but _my_ answers weren’t part of the bargain. Now answer the question, _Jareth_.” She says his name deliberately, goading him, but from the way his eyes flash, she realizes that she has somehow miscalculated. Either he’s much, _much_ angrier than she anticipated, or that isn’t merely anger. They stare at one another for a long moment. Then:

“I don’t know yet,” he says sullenly, looking away.

“That’s why you stopped time—that’s why you said you don’t have all night.”

“Is that a question?”

“No. Do you know anything about this person that you haven’t told me?”

“Yes.”

He really wasn’t going to make this easy, was he? “What is that information?”

He gives her a long, measured look, his eyes unreadable. “This person is connected to you in some way.

It’s like a punch to the gut. She actually hunches over from the force of it, wrapping her arms around her ribcage. Her first thought is of Toby—that _somehow_ she’s managed to put him in danger _again_ —but he’s safe at home with her father and Irene. Her second thought is of Alisse. “Connected to me how?” she asks the ground, gripping herself even tighter.

“I don’t know,” he says, and then, seemingly taking pity on her, “It may not be a close connection. Just someone whose death will touch you in some way. You need not even have met them.”

“But it _could_ be,” she presses, trying to banish the flickering reel of images before her mind’s eye (pale brown hair darkened with blood, staring blue eyes, a skinny body lying twisted and broken on an empty dancefloor), “a—a ‘close connection.’”

“It could.”

She scrubs her forehead with the heels of her hands. “How do you even know about this?” she asks helplessly.

A pause. And then, reluctantly, “I have seen the mark of this death upon you.”

She jerks her head up. “What? _When_?”

“In your time? No more than a week or so ago. In my time, three months.”

“You’ve been _spying_ on me? But you can’t—”

“It isn't a power _over_ you. It doesn’t affect you in any way.”

“It’s affecting me now!” She shoots back. “And it’ll affect me from now on! Jesus, how am I supposed to—to _anything_ when I know you might be _monitoring_ —Don’t you ever do it again, I—I _forbid_ it!”

His eyes flash. Then his lips tighten. “As you will.”

She stares at him, filled with a horrible suspicion. “Which came first? You knowing about the death, or you seeing it on me?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Dammit Jareth, we made a bargain! Which came first?”

“I saw the death upon you,” he says, tightly. “That is how I knew.”

She puts out a hand, reaching blindly towards the wall to steady herself. She shuts her eyes, and focuses on her breathing. “So—so you’ve been watching me. And—and you saw this death and you decided to come here tonight to—to stop it?”

He inclines his head.

“ _Why_?”

“It will provide an advantage to me to do so.”

“What advantage?”

“This death affords me…an opportunity.”

“An opportunity?” she repeats, incredulous. “What kind of opportunity?”

“A valuable one.”

She stamps her foot down, and then bites hard on her lip. She can’t afford to lose her temper. She changes tacks. “Why is saving their life not the same as saving them?”

His lips thin. “The gift of life is not freely given. Some would argue that the price isn’t worth the gift.”

“And what is the price?”

He is silent, staring at her, a calculating gleam in his eyes.

“ _What is the price_ , Jareth?”

“It’s an old bargain,” he says at last. “I will preserve their life. In return for their soul.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N. Yeah, so I realise I just wrote a whole chapter in which nothing actually happens. Sozza. I promise, at least one thing happens in the next chapter. One thing minimum.
> 
> The phrase “so pacted” to seal a bargain I have stolen from either Jalen Strix’s “Forget Me Not Into Oblivion” or Ellen Weaver’s “The Fairest One of All.” If you haven’t read and loved and reviewed both of these stories (favourited on my ff.net profile for your convenience!), you are both bad and wrong and need to fix this immediately.
> 
> Songs:
> 
> “Nightclubbing,” by Iggy Pop. (This song is the creeping feeling of unease when you’re grabbing a fag outside a nightclub while being leisurely stalked by a sexy yet sinister stranger. Like actually tho. Go listen to it if you don’t believe me.)
> 
> “Gimme Danger,” by Iggy Pop and the Stooges. (After that stranger turns out to be the Goblin King, you’re going to want a song that vocalizes the way the undercurrents of menace and erotic promise melt and mingle and intertwine until they are all but indistinguishable, if they ever were distinguishable in the first place. Let us take a moment together to love Iggy Pop.)
> 
> “Prisoner of Love,” by Tin Machine. (More next chapter, really. That’s not a spoiler though, keep your trousers on.)
> 
> “My Death,” by Jacques Brel, as covered by David Bowie.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who left kudos and especially to the lovely izzyhindle, Annissa, jezebella_drakonikas, meinhertz, Asmallcateatingasmallmilk, Lizard12, and NachtHexe for reviewing! Reviews fill me with happy and dancing and keep me writing. Like ackshully tho. 
> 
> <3
> 
> Silks


	3. An Eerie Tale to Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jareth reveals what's been puzzling you, namely, the nature of his game. Sort of. Sarah disapproves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The length of this chapter was getting out of hand, so I polled reviewers (see, all you favouriting and following non-reviewers, you could’ve been polled! you are missing out) to see whether more frequent, shorter chapters or less frequent, fuller chapters were better. Because ya’ll are classy, the preference was overwhelmingly for longer chapters. Except I’d sort of got attached to the idea of splitting the chapter (see all you non-reviewers? you’re missing the chance to have your input ignored!) soooo… Actually, it’s really more that I need self-imposed deadlines to function. 
> 
> Trigger warning: Violent imagery. No actual violence. (We’re getting there)
> 
> EDIT (6/29/2016): Updated to incorporate suggestions from my beta, the wonderful synthetic aesthetic! http://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticaesthetic/pseuds/syntheticaesthetic

**Chapter 3**

**An Eerie Tale to Tell**

* * *

_'And pleasant is the fairy land,_  
_But, an eerie tale to tell,_  
_Ay at the end of seven year_  
_We pay a tiend to hell.’_

“Tam Lin,” Scottish border ballad (Child 31:A)

* * *

_Pleased to meet you,_  
_Hope you guess my name._  
_But what’s puzzling you is the_  
_Nature of my game._

“Sympathy for the Devil,” The Rolling Stones.

* * *

Sarah blinks. “Sorry,” she says. “Could you repeat that? I think I heard you wrong.”

With that same air of exaggerated patience, he does.

She hadn’t.

She gives her head a little shake to clear it. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“I don’t know enough about mortal humour to say,” he replies, quirking an eyebrow. “If what you _mean_ to ask is whether I’m in some way deceiving you, then let me remind you that I am doubly bound, by custom and by the terms of the compact, to answer your questions truthfully.”

“A metaphor, then,” she says, grasping at straws.

He gives another of those strange, birdlike tilts of the head. The gleam of calculation in his eyes is tempered by something else—amusement?

“Souls aren’t _real_ ,” she tells him, half angry, half pleading.

 _Definitely_ amusement. “I’m sure it’s as you say,” he says, with heavy irony, “though it perplexes me that you accepted so readily the existence of the Goblin King, a figure in whom no one in your family and very few in your culture believe, yet refuse to even consider the idea that souls, in which the vast majority of the human race believes, might also exist.”

She’s really not sure just how her life went this wrong, because here she is, wearing a neon crop top and enough makeup (courtesy of Alisse) to make a mime artist do a double take, stuck in a patch of frozen time outside of an illegal rave, debating theology with the Goblin King.

Her laugh is tinged with hysteria. “I mean, I didn’t exactly _choose_ to believe in you. Unlike you, a _soul_ has never whooshed in through my window and carried off one of my family members.”

“True,” he acknowledges, with a small and private smile. There’s something suspicious about that smile—like he’s thinking of a joke that only he gets. _A soul has never whooshed in through my window_…

“Wait,” she says, and is as uneasy as she is pleased at the look of consternation that flickers across his face. “Does that mean you don’t have a soul?”

“Not necessarily,” he says cagily.

“Not—” She stops. If he’s still managing to stonewall her, despite the compact, she must not be asking the right questions. “ _Do_ you have a soul?”

He bares his teeth—she might have mistaken it for a smile, but for the way his eyes flash. “I have had many souls, precious, thousands upon thousands over the centuries. I have several at present, and hope soon to have one more. _Is that what you wanted to hear?_ ”

He leans forward as he speaks. The shift in lighting throws his features into high relief. The high ridges of his cheekbones shine stark and pale above cheeks suddenly rendered hollow with shadow—a skull’s face, but for the glittering eyes.

Looking at him, at all his beauty suddenly made eerie and _wrong_ , makes her skin crawl.

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Do you have a soul of your own? One that didn’t belong to someone else first?”

She opens her eyes to see his grin widen—how had she never noticed how _sharp_ his teeth were? He dips his head in mocking acknowledgement. The very grace of his movements is a threat.

“I do not.”

And she doesn’t believe in souls, wasn’t _raised_ to believe in souls, but _Christ_ if that isn’t the scariest fucking thing she’s heard all night. Shuddering, she turns away from him, wiping her sweating palms on her jeans.

“Is that why you want this person’s soul? Because you don’t have one of your own?”

“In a sense.”

Looking back, she sees that he has propped one shoulder against the wall again, and is watching her, the look of studied amusement on his face belied by the fixity of his stare. Now that he’s no longer under the light, his face appears normal once more—otherworldly, certainly, but not uncanny. It doesn’t matter. She can see the potential now—the bones which lurk beneath the skin.

At least she’s starting to get the hang of this questioning thing. “In what sense is it true?”

“There is an undertaking for which souls are valuable. Not having them ourselves, we must look to outside sources.”

“What undertaking is that?”

“It’s called the Tithe. That is its name and that is what it is.”

 _Oookay_. “What’s a tithe, then?”

His eyebrows fly up and he _tsks_ in mock reproof. “Sarah, I’m surprised at you! And you used to love your fairy tales so.”

“Yeah, well,” she mutters, rubbing her nose, “having lived one has kind of put me off the whole thing.”

He tilts his head consideringly. “A tithe is a payment—a portion due.”

“And in this particular case, a portion of _what_ due to _who_?”

He wrinkles his nose, as in mild distaste. “A portion of us. I don’t know the answer to your second question.”

Sarah stares at him in dumbfounded horror. She knows he isn’t human—knows his—his—call it “moral sense,” for lack of a better word—doesn’t work the same way as hers, but _this_ — “Of us—you mean of _goblins_? You owe a portion of your own people in payment and you don’t even know _who to_?”

“I mean all of us in the Underground, goblins included. And you are correct, I do not know to whom the tithe is paid.”

“Then why do you _pay_?”

He shrugs, as if to say, _what can you do?_ “It is the price for the survival of the Underground.”

She gapes at him. “What does that even _mean_?”

“It means that were the Tithe not paid, the Underground would cease to exist. The land might persist, I don’t know, but all those who dwell there—at best, I suppose, we would be cast out, forced to return to this world of salt seas and iron cities. Many Undergrounders are rather more … delicate than I. Most would perish. At worst…” He shrugs again. “I really can’t begin to imagine.”

Sarah raises a hand to her throat, fighting down the first stirrings of real panic. She was prepared to save a life, yes, but _this_ … An entire _world_? She’s not _ready_ for these kinds of stakes. She’s only eighteen. It isn’t _reasonable_. It’s not—

 _I wonder what your basis for comparison is_ , the Goblin King mocks in her memory. She screws her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. If these are what the stakes _are_ , these are the stakes for which she’ll _play_.

“So that’s why you take people’s souls,” she says, and is proud of the evenness of her tone. “To pay this Tithe. So that your people don’t have to?”

“In essence, yes.”

 _Christ_. “And what happens to them? The souls? After you’ve paid the Tithe?”

“I couldn’t presume to guess.”

It’s the look of genuine unconcern on his face that gets to her, through the sickness in her stomach and the fear in her chest and throat. “You don’t _know_? You trick these people into giving away their souls to pay _your_ debt and you _don’t even know_ what happens to them?”

He gives her a look of mild surprise, then raises a shoulder in an elegant half-shrug. “I don’t know what happens to them if they aren’t tithed. Who’s to say it’s not worse?”

“That’s—” she stares at him as if truly seeing him for the first time. “That’s _monstrous_.”

He sneers. “So you’d have me leave these mortal souls to an unknown fate, ensuring the destruction of my home and my people, rather than assign to them a _different_ unknown fate and preserve the Underground thereby? I admit, I’ve always found human morality somewhat baffling. Perhaps I’m too much of a _monster_ to see it clearly.”

“You _twist everything_ —”

“Same little Sarah. Still so _cruel_. Still so _selfish_. Always so righteous, always so willing to cast others as villains rather than look at the world around you and _think_.”

She starts forward and checks herself, shaking with rage. “Same old _Jareth_ ,” she spits out. “Still so arrogant. Still so _persecuted_ and _misunderstood_. Still so _heartless_.”

His features twist and he pushes himself off the wall, coming forward. “A bold statement, if anatomically ill-informed. I _have_ a heart, precious. It’s a soul I lack, or had you forgotten?” His lips curl back into a jagged, mocking smile. “Though not for much longer.”

She stares up into his face, breathing hard. “What do I have to do to save this person’s soul from you?”

Something like triumph flashes across his face, but it’s gone before Sarah can say for sure whether she imagined it or not.

“Very good,” he approves. “There are several courses of action you could take. The first—and the simplest—would be to kill me.”

She flinches back from him. _Kill_ him? She couldn’t—could she? To save a life?

She puts a hand to her head, suddenly dizzy. Images begin to flicker across her mind—her hand holding a bloodied knife, Jareth below her, a study in red and white, a second, gaping mouth carved into his pale throat—

“Or,” he continues, “perhaps _slay_ is a better term. That’s the word they use in your legends, isn’t it, to describe the death of a monster at the hands of a hero? Yes, you could _slay_ me—”

—both of her hands this time, thrusting a wooden stake through his bared chest, and she can almost _feel_ the bone splintering, the sickening, squelching _give_ as she pushes the stake through his ribcage, straight into the beating heart of which he had boasted not a moment before—

“It’s not a task easily accomplished, I grant, but as your particular talent for upheaval and destruction has already been proved several times over upon my subjects, my capital, my castle, and my own _person_ , I have no doubt you could manage.”

—the roughness of rope against the unblemished skin of his neck—the weight of a brick in her hand as it crashed down—the silver flash of a needle _cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye_ oh God oh _God_ —

“And after all, I am pacted to answer your questions truthfully. You need only _ask_ how you could most easily kill me, and I will be compelled to—”

“No!” she bursts out, clutching her hands to her face.

He falls silent.

“No,” she repeats, more calmly. “ _No one_ is dying tonight.”

“Well,” he says, after a pause, “perhaps that’s for the best, then. After all, if you kill me, I won’t have the opportunity to save the mortal who is to die tonight. What’s more, there’s no knowing whether my successor would be able to make up the required numbers before the Tithe comes due. So, if you _were_ to kill me, you’d also be responsible for the deaths of one tenth of the Underground.”

One _tenth_?

“So, I suppose your only other choice is to strike a bargain.” He smiles. “Offer me something worth a mortal’s soul.”

Another bargain. _God_.

Sarah swallows. “What do you want?”

He throws back his head and laughs. “What do I _want_? Oh precious, where to even _begin_?”

“Never mind,” she says hastily. “I withdraw the question. What kind of bargain would you accept?”

“What kind of bargain?” he muses, tapping his teeth with a white-gloved finger. He smiles around it. “As I’m feeling quite _generous_ tonight, despite considerable provocation, let’s say, a _fair_ one. You were once very much attached to the idea of fairness, as I remember.”

Sarah grits her teeth.

“Let’s see…” He strikes a thoughtful pose.

Sarah’s indignation increases, momentarily overwhelming the anxiety and the fear, because he’s _enjoying_ this, the rat—

“Ah, I think this will do admirably. A fair bargain: a life for a death.” He pauses, licks his lips, though whether in nervousness or anticipation Sarah couldn’t say. “Your death.”

She recoils. “My— I’m not going to let you kill me!”

He grins—or at least, his lips curl back and bare his teeth again. “So you _do_ have some instinct for self-preservation. After your performance in my Labyrinth, I had wondered. But I said nothing of killing. It’s not your _dying_ I want, but your _death_.” His tone gentles, grows wheedling, but his eyes are feral. “Only give me your death and you may live out your mortal days in peace Aboveground. Pursue some pointless career, wed some fatuous mortal, squeeze out a few brats—”

Sarah chokes. “ _Excuse me?_ ”

“Grow and age and whither and die as you will, it matters not. But everything that comes after…” The hunger on his face is a terrible thing to behold. “Everything from the moment your soul leaves your body until the last star burns out in the sky will be mine.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God I love cliff-hangers. I think this fic is uncovering my latent sadistic tendencies. What a journey this is for us all!  
> Any T.S. Eliot fans catch the reference to “Whispers of Immortality?” (Although honestly, maybe the question should just be, “Any T.S. Eliot fans?” Is that even a thing?)
> 
> Also, I know I promised you a bit of action—that’s in what is now chapter 4, coming within a week. But it is coming! I’ve written most of it!
> 
> AND I’m happy to say we’ve finished the exposition-heavy part of our story. I mean, I tried to make it as tense and sexy for ya’ll as I could, but when it comes down to it, 50% of the story so far has been Sarah and Jareth just laying out all the background to the main plot while not touching (I’m sorry, the dialogue is like drugs—I get started and I just can’t stop). But now that’s done and we can get eventful up in hurr! (Woop.)
> 
> Songs:  
> “Sympathy for the Devil,” by the Rolling Stones.  
> “The Killing Type,” by Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra (the reason it gets all weird and morbid).
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left kudos and especially to izzyhindle, Asmallcateatingasmallmilk, mewcowardlylion, Sarah, and Xari for reviewing!
> 
> EXTRA BIG SPECIAL THANKS to CharlotteFox over at ff.net for playing both researcher and research subject about 90s raves—you have been the most obliging and valuable of humans and I am very grateful!
> 
> I know I am a cruel and wicked author, but I live for your reviews, I really do! I actually do love you all who read and review and enjoy, even if (rather like a certain Goblin King) I don’t always know how to show it.
> 
> Silks


	4. Satan, Settle Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we discover how to short-circuit Jareth’s brain (Also that when he freaks out he grows *feathers.* Bless), Sarah makes a decision, and the question of the deathmarked mortal is resolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: YOU GUYS I HAVE A BETA NOW. To her credit should go all noticeable increase in quality and/or coherence. Her name is syntheticaesthetic and she is awesome and talented, and if you’re into the Walking Dead or Marble Hornets, you should RUN NOT WALK to go check out her stuff! (http://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticaesthetic/pseuds/syntheticaesthetic)
> 
> TW: implied dubious consent, reference to sexual assault

**Chapter 4 **

**Satan, Settle Down**

* * *

_My death waits like an old roué,_  
_So confident I'll go his way:_  
_Whistle to him and the passing time._

“My Death,” Jacques Brel via David Bowie.

* * *

 _Satan, settle down._  
_Keep your trousers on._  
_You can warm the globe, but leave my wretched soul alone._

“A Children’s Crusade on Acid,” Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos

* * *

She shuts her eyes, but she can still feel his gaze on her, a crawling, prickling heat, and she wants to tear it from her skin. She wants to press her hands over her ears and curl up into a ball and _scream_. She wants her mother, she wants her father, she wants to be miles away, she wants anything else, any _one_ else, any _where_ else just as long as it’s _not_ _this_. It’s too much _._ It’s _too much_.

But she’s the hero. That means she doesn’t get to break, and she doesn’t get to quit.

She rakes her hands down her face, then opens her eyes and says, with a tolerable assumption of calm, “So, I’d be the tithe payment in their place, then.”

 “ _No_.” He gives a strange lurch, as if he’d been about to lunge forward and restrained himself only at the last minute.

She flinches away from the force of his reply, staring. She’s never seen him so agitated—never imagined him capable of agitation. Anger, yes: cold and cruel and slow as ice, or hot and clean as fire, but never this. He looks _wrong_. Unstable, as if he were a house of cards teetering on the verge of collapse.

“I have served,” he mutters, staring into space, clenching and unclenching his fists. His face works furiously, emotions flickering over his face too fast for Sarah to recognize, let alone name. His eyes look almost black the pupils are so swollen, and his hair—are those _feathers_ in his hair? “For centuries, I have served. I am _owed_ —”

He breaks off, catching sight of her face. She meets his gaze and it’s like staring into an open wound, raw and bleeding.

“Not you,” he says, more gently, but with a fervour that is far more frightening than any of his fury. “Never you. Only promise me your death and I will make any oath that will satisfy you.”

All of a sudden she can’t stand there a moment longer, bearing the weight of that gaze. She turns away, and in a few steps, reaches the other corner of the alcove. She props her arm against the wall and rests her head against it, relishing the roughness of the wall against her skin. Because anything which distracts her right now is welcome, even if that something is pain.

He makes some noise and she hears him step forward. She reaches behind her and thrusts out her free hand, palm outstretched. The sound of movement ceases.

“I’m thinking,” she says, harshly.

She _is_ thinking, trying desperately to work it all out: what he’s asking, what he’s offering, what it is he actually _wants_. What’s at stake. If she said yes… she’d be saving the life of someone whose… whose death would impact her when she died? She thinks again of Alisse.

And she’d be free of him—free of the magic, free of the Underground, free to live out the rest of her life in peace. Isn’t that what she wants? Isn’t that what she _deserves_?

But after—and she’s not sure she even believes in after, even now, but if she’s wrong… She thinks of the hunger on his face and shivers. She’d belong to him. Forever. Or as good as.

A wave of revulsion rises in her. No. Never.

She squares her shoulders and turns around to face him. “No deal. What else would you accept?”

His face shutters. After a few moments, he says, with something approaching his earlier ease, “In that case, you could always wish me away a replacement.”

It must be a particular talent of his, because the fact that there’s anything that can still throw her after what’s happened so far tonight is astonishing. “You want me to _wish someone away to you_? Again? Are you _insane_? I’m not going to sacrifice one person just to save another!”

“Ah, but Sarah,” and if she hadn’t already known he could be cruel, that glinting smile, the mockery in his eyes would have been evidence enough, “consider. You’d be saving far more than one life. A mortal soul is a valuable thing—far more valuable than the lives of any of my people.” There is a brief and bitter twist to his mouth. “But a living human? For the sacrifice of one living human, you would spare a thousand souls.”

She remembers _sitting in the cafeteria, and Ernie Ling plopping down across from her with a truly evil grin, announcing that he was doing a project for Philosophy, and asking, if they could prevent a fatal train accident by diverting the train onto a track with a person standing on it, would they? What about two people? Or five? Would they push someone off the platform onto the track, if that would stop the train from crashing?_

She remembers _the way Alisse rolled her eyes and told Ernie he was a freak, and anyway, obviously_ _a whole train full of people was more important than five people, why was he even bothering to ask?_ And _the way the whole group was willing to sacrifice the life of, as Monica Lewis put it, “the kind of idiot who hangs around on train tracks anyway,” but after that, opinions began to diverge and everyone fell into debating, drawing, erasing_ , _and redrawing lines in the sand._

She remembers _the look of satisfaction on Ernie’s face as he watched them argue,_ and _the nausea building in the pit of her stomach with each successive question, each new and increasingly horrible iteration of the moral dilemma._ She remembers _wondering what was wrong_ _with her, and why it didn’t feel like a hypothetical. Why it felt like some huge, momentous choice, like whatever she said now would be entered in some great cosmic ledger—like whatever choice she made would be somehow graven in stone, irreversible. Inevitable._ She remembers _Ernie turning to her at last with that cocky grin, not knowing, not knowing_, and she remembers, _‘What about you, Williams? I know you’ve got an opinion to share,’_ and _the rest of the table turning to look at her_ and _opening her mouth and_ —

She remembers _the sick, guilty, blessed feeling of relief that rushed through her as the bell rang._ She remembers thinking, _Thank god, not today._

“No,” she says, not looking at him. “That’s—that’s not my call to make. No one should have that kind of responsibility.”

“Someone has to. Why not you? Surely you’d be a better candidate than I. Surely the _hero_ is far better equipped to sort the righteous from the unrighteous than the _villain_. You’ve always fancied yourself the hero, haven’t you, Sarah? Call it…heroic responsibility.” He savors the last two words.

She flick her eyes to his and then looks quickly away again. How she hates him in that moment, for knowing her—for _daring_ to know her—and for using that knowledge as a weapon.

“No,” she says, and it’s herself she loathes now for how lost and lonely and desperate and afraid she sounds—herself, and him most of all for hearing it. “No. I won’t. I _won’t_. _No!_ ” She catches her breath on a near shriek.

 _Keep it together, Williams_.

She inhales. “What else?” she asks, voice far from steady.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little clearer with your questions, precious.”

“What else can I offer you as a bargain, so that you’ll save this person’s life and leave their soul alone?”

He looks at her coolly. “There’s nothing you could offer me.”

“What?” Sarah goggles, her heart begin to race. “But—”

“I have offered you two bargains with fair and reasonable terms, and you have refused them both. Quite emphatically. I know of nothing else that you can offer me that would be worth this soul.”

And there must be something wrong with the air because her throat is closing up and she can’t breathe she can’t _breathe_. And there must be something wrong with her vision because she’s looking at him but she can’t seem to focus properly. She knuckles her eyes, but it’s still like looking through a tunnel, and her heart is racing and all she can hear is the sound of doors closing. _Wrong choice_ , something sings in the back of her mind. _Wrong choice! Wrong, wrong!_

“How else can I stop you?” she manages.

“There are several ways you could have stopped me, if only you had come prepared. But now? No other method is known to me.”

She massages her throat, fingers almost brutal, willing her airways to open—her pulse to slow. “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Do you hear me, Goblin King? It doesn’t _matter_. I’m still going to stop you.”

A flash of teeth. “You can certainly try.”

“I’m done,” she says, struggling to keep her voice calm. “I— This is— We’re done. No more questions. Just—just snap your fingers or whatever and let me _go_!”

Not waiting for a response, she whirls around, not even sure of her direction just so long as it’s _away_.

A hot, prickling itch begins under her skin and a faint buzzing drone fills her ears. She stops, massages her ears and temples with the heels of her hands. She takes another step. The prickling and the buzzing increase. She stops again.

“Forgetting something?” His voice comes from behind her. “Not very pleasant, is it?”

“I— What did you do to me?”

“Not I. _I_ , as you take such delight in pointing out, have no power over you. It is the compact, demanding that its terms be fulfilled.”

Her mind is racing. What—?

“A lock of your hair,” he reminds her with a mocking lilt. “Chosen by me, cut by you, and given to me.”

“Right,” she says, shaking her head to clear it. She turns around, takes a step towards him. The buzzing and the prickling fade. “Okay. Just—point out the lock of hair you want, I guess, and I’ll cut it and then we can go.”

“No need for haste.” He smirks. “Time is going nowhere. And I can’t simply, as you say, ‘point out’ the requisite lock. I need to find one that suits.” He takes a step forward and gestures towards her head. “If I may?”

“Fine,” she says, feeling foolish and out of sync. How did he keep _doing_ that? When had the tone between them shifted? “Just be quick about it, will you?”

He gives an ironic half-bow and gestures for her to turn around. She does, swallowing.

He pulls the hair tie from her hair and hands it to her. His hands are almost maddeningly gentle, his search slow and methodical enough that she’s certain it must be done deliberately to annoy her. She bites back her irritation and tries to pretend he isn’t there—no easy feat when he’s all but breathing down the back of her neck, hands woven through her hair. She tries to think over their conversation, for anything she’s missed—

“Jareth,” she says suddenly.

An intake of breath from behind her. Then:

“Yes?” he purrs.

“No, your name: _Jareth_. Why didn’t you like me using your name?”

“Did I say I disliked it?” He leans forward a fraction. His breath stirs her hair. His voice is low, as if confiding a secret. “I don’t dislike it in the least.”

And she must admit that he certainly doesn’t sound like he minds, if the rumbling caress of his voice is anything to go by. But—

“When I first called you by your name, you were _angry_. Why were you angry?”

His head withdraws a little. “Apart from the fact that you could only have learnt it through the treachery of one of my subjects?” He huffs out a breath. “The name is a binding—it binds me to the oath I swore and the pact we made. I am _already_ bound to obey both oath and compact,” he says, cutting her off mid-protest. “The name just … hastens things.”

She takes a moment, mulling this over, trying to ignore the fingers still gently sifting through her hair, the occasional brush of leather against her scalp. “We made the pact together. Would my name bind me the way yours does, or…?”

He lowers his head again, murmuring directly into her ear as he begins winding a lock of hair at the base of her skull around one of his fingers. “I don’t know, precious. Shall we find out?”

He tugs suddenly on the lock twined around his finger, and steps back. Sarah tries, not entirely successfully, to smother a gasp. Her back seems suddenly very cold and exposed.

“This will do admirably,” he says, tone brisk and businesslike. “Now, do you have such a thing as a knife on you, or shall I conjure one?”

“What’s the price?” she asks warily.

“So suspicious! Consider this pro bono. After all, it benefits me as well.”

She still doesn’t trust him, of course, but what else is she going to do, bite the lock off? She looks over her shoulder and sees a little silver knife gleaming in his outstretched palm. Quickly, she redoes her ponytail, leaving aside the lock he’s chosen—somehow, quite without her noticing, he’s managed to tie a ribbon around it. She takes the knife in one hand, pulling the hair taut with the other, sets the knife just over the ribbon, and slices.

She isn’t prepared for how sharp the knife is, slicing through the lock of hair and on into the skin of her neck before she even realised what’s happened.

“ _Shit_ ,” she says, thrusting the knife and the lock into his hands and feeling the back of her neck for the wound. Blood, but not much by the feel of it.

“A small injury,” he remarks. “Easily healed. If you would permit—”

“What’s the price?” she asks again, twisting around to look at him.

He arches an eyebrow. “I _was_ going to offer my services _gratis_ , but I do so hate to fall short of your expectations. Shall we say … a kiss?” His smile is teasing.

 _Is he--? Surely he’s not_ flirting? And she’d thought the night couldn’t get any more surreal.

At least this she knows how to deal with. She snorts. “In your dreams, Goblin King.”

His smile widens, all teeth now—a shark’s grin. “Ah, Sarah, my Sarah, didn’t your mother ever tell you? Dreams are for fools and mortals and I, dear heart, am neither.”

As if she needed another reminder that he wasn’t human.

“Yeah, well,” she says. “I think I’ll take my chances with some Neosporin when I get home.”

He shrugs lightly. “Very well. Then the compact is concluded.”

He doesn’t even snap his fingers this time. All of a sudden there’s the breeze again, wafting the scent of cigarette smoke from around the corner, and the deep thrum of the bass and the noise of the crowd.

She stands for a moment, at a loss, thrown by this last, abrupt change.

“Was there anything else? I don’t have all night, and unless I’m very much mistaken, neither do you. Or, for that matter, your … connection.”

Her face twists. “ _Fuck_ you.”

Then she turns on her heel and sprints back to the entrance of the party.

* * *

Jareth watches her go, humming thoughtfully to himself. Music is about the only art form his kind is capable of producing, but he has spent enough time Aboveground to develop a certain taste for mortal compositions.

“It’s too late,” he sings softly, delicately turning the silver knife to catch the light, “to be grateful.”

Although of course, he _is_ grateful—more than grateful. What a boon is mortal ignorance! Sarah’s _blood_. He’d never dreamed he might be so fortunate. And freely given—she had actually handed him the knife with her blood still on the blade.

“It’s too late—”

He summons the power and lets it crystallize around the knife, then tosses it in the air where vanishes it with a satisfying _pop._ It will be waiting for him in his study when he finishes this night’s work.

“—to be late again.”

He repeats the process on the lock of hair, and, turning to go, spots the discarded roll-up lying on the concrete. Now that he has the blood, the saliva on the rolling paper is all but superfluous, but still, waste not… He stoops down to pick up the cigarette, pops a crystal around it, vanishes it, and straightens again.

“It’s too late—”

He closes his eyes, feeling for the death like a hound searching for a scent. Venues like this one make for poor hunting grounds—too many people means too many signals—too much data. Get enough people together in one place and to the psychically inclined, it’s all so much white noise. Were it not for Sarah, he would probably have searched out a target elsewhere. He hadn’t really expected her to promise her death to him just like that, although of course he had _hoped…_ He tamps down the unfamiliar swell of emotions. No matter. It’s just a matter of time now. She is human after all. A delicious, endlessly surprising, headstrong human certainly, but human nonetheless.

 _Humans._ What a burden all that _curiosity_ must be. Never was there a creature less equipped to resist temptation. And now that she knows what wishing someone away to him really _means_ …

“—to be hateful.”

He smiles complacently. Just a matter of time. The prospect of forever stretches out before him. The Goblin King, thinking on a green-eyed girl, looks upon forever, and finds it good.

And there it is at last, buried deep in the crowd, beneath all the dreams and wishes and desires: the deathmark, like a barely-noticeable smudge of ink on the collective psychic body of the revellers. Just a second, and then it’s gone again, buried somewhere in the middle of that mad, roiling sea of possibility. But it’s enough.

He dusts off his gloves fastidiously, then pulls the glamour tight about himself like a cloak, and rejoins the crowd.

* * *

It’s almost like drowning. To step out of the coolness of the evening, the stillness and the crystalline quiet of the Goblin King’s frozen moment, and into _this_ : the noise and the heat and the frenetic movement of the lights. The sour smell of beer and sweat, the urgent press of hundreds of restless bodies—Sarah can feel the weight of it all bearing down on her, can feel the current threatening to pull her under. The main difference, she thinks, grimly elbowing her way through the crowd, is that when you push on water, it moves. It doesn’t push back. Drowning, she thinks, a desperate laugh bubbling to her lips, would be an improvement.

And then, _finally_ , she’s through, because there’s Ernie Ling, straining to support a _very_ drunk Christine Templeton, who appears to be attempting to fuse with him on a cellular level.

“Williams!” he calls over the top of Christine’s head, face splitting into a grin.

“Ernie!” she says. “Ernie, we’ve got to go.”

“What?”

“We’ve got to—”

“Sarah!” Alisse cries, wriggling through a gap in the crowd. “You’re back already?”

“Alisse,” Sarah says urgently. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”

“That was so fast! Kyle isn’t even—”

Sarah reaches out and gives her friend a little shake. “Alisse, we’ve _got to go_. Where is everybody?”

Alisse’s dark lined mouth falls open in dismay. “What? _Why_?”

Now _there_ was a question she really should have anticipated.

“Because—”

She casts around desperately for an excuse. What would frighten Alisse enough into leaving without asking any more questions? She scans the crowd, searching for inspiration. The music gives a sudden wail and the strobing lights flash red and blue—

“Someone called the cops! They’re on their way right now.”

“ _What_?” Alisse’s face is alight with equal parts panic and indignation. “Someone _narced_?”

“Yeah, I just heard! We’ve got to go _now_ , before they get here.”

Alisse stares at her for a moment, clearly struggling to process this new information.

“Alisse!” Sarah gives her another little shake. “We need to find everyone and then we need to get out of here!”

The urgency in her voice breaks the spell.

“Right,” Alisse says. “You get Ernie. I just saw Andre over by the DJ…”

* * *

Jareth passes through the crowd, skimming the dreams which rise like seafoam in the minds of the dancers. His pace is leisurely; he moves with ease, the crowd flowing apart like water before him. To an outside observer, there’s nothing obviously unnatural in his passage apart from the fact of its ease—the dancers seem scarcely to notice him, much less consciously make room for him. It’s simply that anywhere he chooses to go, other people… aren’t.

He pauses for a moment, inhaling deeply, and gives a little sigh of contentment. Dreams are so near the surface here, readily available to anyone who knows how to look. He’s always approved of mortal intoxicants for this very reason. He smiles, thinking fondly of the opium dens which had spread through Europe and Asia—was it a century ago? Two? Heroin—child of that same poppy—cuts a similar swath through the mortals of today, but to his mind, it lacks a certain…aesthetic appeal.

But this— He can’t remember the last time he’s been to a proper bacchanal. Not that this is a _proper_ bacchanal—he hasn’t seen a true bacchanal since the founding of the Underground, back when he and his kind walked under the true sun and were mistaken for gods, before mankind discovered the bite of iron and the sting of salt. This revel is as nothing in comparison to the ecstatic rites of the Greeks, the Beltane of the Celts, or the fertility festivals for the goddess Ishtar, but, for a shadow, it is pleasing and well-delineated.

Someone touches his arm and he whirls around. A red-haired girl is gazing up at him. As he meets her gaze, her jaw drops a little. She begins to speak, but her voice is drowned out by the music. Jareth lowers the ambient noise around them just enough to hear.

“—even cuter than I thought.” Her face is flushed, dewed with sweat. “You want to dance?”

Jareth considers her. Her dilated eyes are glazed, but somewhere buried in their depths there is a _spark_ — She must have some small aptitude for magic even to have noticed him long enough to desire him, though it is almost certainly untrained. Another time, when he didn’t have a job to do, perhaps he might have dallied.

Behind her, he catches the eye of a gangly youth with acne scars and a most ill-considered moustache. Jareth doesn’t even need to dip into his dreams: it’s all there on his face, the resentment, the jealousy, the frustrated desire.

No reason he can’t amuse himself, even without dalliance.

He looks back down at the girl.

“Do you want me?” he asks, voice low and pitched to thrill.

She blinks, and that small spark in her eyes seems to flare with her uncertainty. “I—” she says in confusion. “I want to _dance_ with you…”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

She licks her lips. “Yes,” she whispers.

It’s power enough.

“Julie,” he says, plucking the name out of her mind. “ _Julie_.” He savors the music of its syllables. “But you don’t _truly_ want me, do you? You want that young man there, who watches you with such hunger in his eyes.”

She wrinkles her forehead, following his gaze. “Who? _Cliff_?” She shakes her head. “No, I want—”

He finds her dream of him—of a dance with an elegant stranger, of kisses, of night air and the hiking up of skirts and the damp, shuddering glide of flesh on flesh—and _pushes_.

He steps back. Julie is already turning away from him, back towards her friends, and Jareth is amused to see the sudden, dumbfounded hope on the boy’s face as she meets his hungry gaze with one of her own.

_Lord, what fools these mortals be._

Laughing softly, he resumes his search.

* * *

Forty minutes later they’re piling through the door of Andre Mitchell’s basement.

“Just keep it down, guys,” Andre urges. “My dad doesn’t give a fuck, just don’t wake him up, you know?”

Alisse slumps onto the ratty couch, gasping. “Shit,” she says. “ _Shit_.”

Sarah glances around, doing a rapid headcount. There’s Andre, Alisse, Monica—

“Where’s Mike?” she asks.

Andre jerks a thumb towards the bathroom. “Puking,” he says, succinctly.

“You know how he gets about stress,” Monica adds, rolling her eyes.

“And Ernie’s helping Christine. That’s probably them now.”

Sure enough, the basement door is opening, and Ernie is helping a giggling Christine down the steps.

Sarah closes her eyes in relief. All accounted for then. It had occurred to her, as they fled, that Jareth had only said that someone at the rave was going to die, not that they were going to die _at the rave_. But as long as she can keep them here, under her eye, they’ll be safe.

Well. As long as the house doesn’t burn down. Andre’s basement is a house fire waiting to happen. _But_ , she reminds herself, if the house burns down, they’re _all_ screwed, and Jareth had only talked about _one_ person dying. Surely if it was more than one he would’ve mentioned it. He wouldn’t have missed the chance to apply more leverage in order to get—she shudders—whatever it is he was trying to get from her. Her death? Her afterlife? Her _soul_?

She looks around again. Here, under the basement lights, surrounded by week-old pizza boxes and sprawling teenagers, bereft of the confident rush of adrenaline, she feels suddenly unsure about the whole thing. What if it _was_ the drugs? Surely that’s the most _likely_ explanation. She reaches up, touching the little wound on the back of her neck surreptitiously, and winces at the sting. But she could have got that—oh, any _number_ of ways.

There’s the sound of another door opening and Mike Stephanopoulos emerges from the bathroom, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Oh, _ew_ ,” says Monica. “Mike, for fuck’s sake—”

But Ernie interrupts, speaking from the corner where he sits with Alisse, a still giggling Christine propped between them. “Hey,” he says, looking around, frowning in concern. “Anyone seen DeLuca?”

* * *

The hunt lasts for a good hour longer. He catches several tantalizing glimpses of the deathmark as he searches, brief flashes of darkness, like a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, or the tail of a black dog disappearing around a corner. Whoever he seeks is evidently on their own, or at the very least, not much valued by their companions—none of the dancers he encounters bear even a hint of a shadow such as the one that his quarry’s impending doom had cast upon Sarah and her friend.

Nevertheless, whoever it is he pursues clearly hasn’t been stingy with their attention this evening. As he moves through the crowd, Jareth spots traces left by the fate on half a dozen girls, strange discolorations and pittings of the aura—contact burns, though already half faded. A particularly unpleasant fate, then, or a particularly noxious bearer, to leave such marks. Delving into the girls’ muddled and fragmentary minds provides few further clues—either his quarry lacks the ability to make themselves impressionable enough to feature in the thoughts or dreams of those they’ve intimately encountered, or they have a particular knack for picking out women too intoxicated to remember.

And then, at last, a girl with an aura rippling and bubbling at the acid touch of the fate, and an image in her mind—wavering and roiling with confusion and conflicting emotion, but distinct enough—of a narrow face, dark eyes framed with girlishly long lashes, and a mop of black curls.

Jareth moves closer, searching for the source of the aura. The crowd parts before him like the Red Sea, and Jareth finds himself staring down a corridor of people at a tall girl, her back obscured by a waterfall of dark hair. He inhales sharply. There’s a strange sort of twang in his chest, like a guitar string plucked out of tune. If not for the unfamiliar aura, he could almost have mistaken her for—

But there, hands on her shoulders, mouth at her ears, hips insinuatingly brushing against hers, is the boy marked for death. Had the girl not so startlingly resembled his Sarah, he would have noticed him sooner. How had it taken so long to find him, with a fate like that upon him, black and cruel, riding his shoulders like a witch?

He reaches into the boy’s mind, drawing out thoughts and strands of dream like candyfloss, picking apart his desires in search of something he can _use_ —and stops abruptly as he comes across a familiar face. Sarah— _his_ Sarah—dancing under flashing lights, eyes bright and vacant, mouth open and wet. He pushes deeper, memory and fantasy blurring into a flickering montage: Sarah, her pretty mouth pulled into a thoughtful scowl, hunched over a desk with a pencil in hand—Sarah in shorts and a mussed ponytail, sweat trickling down her forehead, spiking a volleyball over a net—Sarah sweating and panting, back pressed to a wall—Sarah in the cafeteria, opening her mouth to take a bite of an apple—Sarah on her knees, opening her mouth to—

Jareth claws through the boy’s mind, searching out the threads of intent that bind together memory and fantasy, barely noticing as the boy jerks away from the girl, pressing a hand to his head. And there it is, the boy’s plan—he snatches viciously at it, ignoring his victim’s moan and sudden pallor. A small bag of innocuous looking white pills, tucked away in a pocket of the boy’s trousers.

And now he’s deep enough to see the shape of the dying on him, to trace its familiar contours. Not that he needs to see it to know. He already knows—already knows this is one soul that will be spared the Tithe, because he hasn’t the slightest intention of saving this boy’s life. Quite the contrary.

He shrugs, accepting the loss of the soul philosophically. He has, after all, taken many a soul—many a death—over the years, but it’s been centuries since he’s taken a _life_. A small, cruel smile distorts his mouth. He may even enjoy it.

He gives another tug on the boy’s psyche—and had Jareth believed in a higher power, he would have sent up gleeful hosannas in praise of mortal drugs and how open they leave the mind, how vulnerable to influence and intrusion. The boy gives another moan, his hand going up to cover his mouth as he retches. He turns away from his dance partner and begins to push his way through the crowd. Jareth obligingly surrounds him with a little of his own aura: the crowd melts away before him, easing his path to the exit.

The Goblin King watches his passage. A feral anticipation is rising in him—a pure and savage joy. He can feel his hold over his current form weaken as the predator in him emerges, feel the fine hair along his arms softening into the down of feathers. He tugs off his gloves, careful not to snag them on fingers already curving into talons, and follows the boy outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Kyle. Created solely for the purpose of being a scumbag and then being killed for it. Kings tho, amirite? So pissy when you try and horn in on their territory. Jareth is very clear on this—only he is allowed to roofie Sarah.
> 
> Show of hands: who thought she was going to take the deal?
> 
> The lyrics Jareth sings are from “Station to Station” (because obviously he’s a Bowie fan and no, I have no intention of providing any sort of explanation for that). I was kinda torn between the creepiness of having him sing (is there anything more sinister than someone singing as they go about their villainous deeds? esp when it’s the most paranoid, gloriously coked-up song in the entire Bowie repertoire?), and then the fact that I was including a song in the fic. But I figured, it’s Jareth. He sings. That’s like his schtick. So whatevs. If songs in fics give you hives, sincere apologies—I’m not planning on making a habit of it.
> 
> The phrase “heroic responsibility” I nicked from HPMOR. It’s a great place to nick things from, if you’re of a larcenous disposition. The bit with Julie and Cliff is an adaptation of a scene from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, with Jareth standing in for Desire.
> 
> Alisse is pronounced uh-LEESS (like what you might get if you don’t want to buy a car: “a lease”).
> 
> Songs (not going to bother including the ones in the epigraph—that goes without saying):  
> “One Engine,” by the Decemberists. (Sarah’s theme)  
> “Gold,” by Sir Sly (for the intercut scenes of Jareth stalking through the crowd while Sarah frantically tries to herd her friends out of danger. For, ya know, the film adaptation of this fic…).  
> “Red Right Hand,” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. (Jareth’s theme)  
> “Prisoner of Love,” Tin Machine. (“I smell the sickness sown in this city/ It drives me to hide you, yeah, even deceive you/ I'm so afraid for you/ That I'll break any thug that maps out your passage to ruin.” See, I told you it was this chapter!)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos, a big thanks to Exulansis, Lol, BriarLily, Jayenn, SparkesJustReads and nightangelerik for reviewing, and another extra big thanks to CharlotteFox at ff.net for help with 90s raves! 
> 
> Next chapter (entitled “Five Years”) out in hopefully around two weeks—current plan is two chapters a month, although we’ll see how that holds up once grad school starts again. In the meantime, please leave a review and let me know what you think! It makes me (a) happy, (b) more productive, and (c) a better writer! Am also accepting relevant song recommendations—I was listening to the radio the other day and “Under the Earth” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came on and that’s now a whole new minor plot arc, so music is inspiration and inspiration is better story!


	5. All Right, Easy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhapsody in post-traumatic anxieties.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MASSPIRG, not that it’s super important, is a real thing—it stands for Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, and it’s a non-profit based on college campuses advocating for things college students care about, like environmental reform, gay rights, etc. I’m quite happy inventing complex cosmologies for imaginary kingdoms and horrifying traditions of arcane sacrifice for ya’ll, but I draw the line at making up inoffensively virtuous student organizations for Sarah to join in her desperate search for post-Jareth meaning.
> 
> Betaed by the glorious **syntheticaesthetic** http://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticaesthetic/pseuds/syntheticaesthetic.

** Chapter 5 **

**All Right, Easy**

* * *

_I'm saving up all of my strength_  
_for when I finally fail_  
_at keeping you safe._  
  
_When my last friend should leave me,_  
_it's all right, easy._

“Two Small Deaths,” Wye Oak.

* * *

The rest of the summer isn’t hell, exactly. Not to anyone with a basis for comparison.

Hell, in Sarah’s admittedly limited experience, is seeing a dream come to life and steal away your baby brother and all your preconceptions in one go, and then, after you’ve risked life and limb to undo the harm you’d done with your cruelty and ignorance, being dumped back into your mundane world, not sure what really happened, not sure whether you’re even _sane_ , with your only firm touchstone for reality being the memory of the stupid, selfish impulse by which you’d betrayed your brother in the first place. Hell is trying to move through a world that suddenly seems to have only two dimensions and not knowing if any alternative exists outside your own mind. Hell is the sneaking suspicion that one does and that it could re-emerge and take you at any moment, but you’ll never know when or even _if_ it’ll happen, and that if it does then everything you’ve done up until that point—your entire goddamn _life_ —will just have been _killing time_. And if it _doesn’t_ … then your life-altering experience was a fluke and you’re just an ordinary shmuck with a life slightly more empty than every other shmuck around you.

Hell is _not_ , she tells herself, lying on the bed with her body curled around itself like a question, having the magic return and discovering that you have power and agency. It isn’t rising to the occasion and acting in good faith and doing everything you could reasonably be expected to do to save the life of someone who was frankly a bit of a creep, and that was before he turned out to be packing a Ziploc baggie full of rohypnol.

So whatever this is, it can’t be hell. Even if that person died because you lied to your friends about a police raid and accidentally left him behind. Even if the police never raided the party, exposing you as a liar to all your friends. Even if the subsequent investigation into that person’s death reveals that you and your friends were with him just before his murder, and now your parents and all your friends’ parents know where you’d been that Friday and it wasn’t at a sleepover at Andre’s. Even if you’re grounded for the rest of the summer. Even if it doesn’t matter, because your friends are all either grounded themselves, or not speaking to you, or, in most cases, both. Even if, the day after the police call her in, your best friend turns up at your house with a toothbrush, a backpack full of clothes, and a frangible lie of a smile. Even if your best friend is still a minor, so when her tight-lipped mother shows up three days later to escort her home, you watch that smile shatter and do _nothing_ , because there’s nothing for you to do except make things worse.

Even if, once she’s gone, there’s nothing left to distract you from the fact that, creep or not, someone is dead—

 _“Blunt force trauma,” the detective had said. “Lacerations to the face, hands, and throat. Puncture wounds in the scalp and eyes,” and he’d slid a photo across the table and oh god the image of that familiar face, the skin grey and taut and waxy and patterned with puckered gashes, hair caked with blood, one eye closed, the other a pulpy mass_…

—dead because of _you_ , because of choices you made, and everyone who blames you is right three times over, even if they don’t know it, and you can never, ever tell them why.

Even if you still aren’t sure whether what happened was an ending or a beginning.

The rest of the summer isn’t hell, but it’s close enough for government work.

But she grits her teeth, and takes the guilt and the confusion and the fear and the failure and the anger and the _magic_ and locks them back in their (slightly battered) cage and gets on with things.

She manages to worm her way back into Irene’s good graces with an unprecedented enthusiasm for babysitting. The first few times she volunteers, Irene gives her the raised-eyebrows “you’re not fooling anybody, young lady” treatment. But she doesn’t say no, and can be heard just a week later (by anyone with an ear pressed to the door of the master bedroom) arguing leniency on Sarah’s behalf.

“She’s a teenager. She’s bound to make stupid mistakes. Anyway, she’s about to start college—isn’t it better she make those mistakes _now_ , when she still has us nearby to look after her?”

Robert Williams’ muttered response is inaudible through the door, but Irene laughs and says, “She’s a smart kid, Robbie. And anything that gets her out of the house can’t be all bad, can it?”

While there’s no immediate effect in her father’s behavior towards her, it’s almost certainly down to Irene’s influence that Sarah is allowed out of the house at all that summer.

“I’ve just been feeling so shi—bad about this whole thing,” Sarah says, carefully. “With Kyle. I thought I could maybe do some volunteer work, like, at the hospital or something. Help people. Maybe it’d make things a little less shi—bad. You know? Do you think Dad would let me?”

Irene purses her lips. “The trick to dealing with Robert—” She stops, as if unsure whether this is really appropriate information to share with her step daughter.

Sarah gives her what, with luck, is a winning and reassuring smile, and winks.

Irene laughs, glances around surreptitiously, and leans forward, having plainly decided that there’s no better method of step-mother/step-daughter bonding than lessons in manipulation.

“The trick to dealing with Robert,” she confides, “is to ask him for things he really wants to give you. Right now he wants to be mad at you a lot more than he wants you to change bedpans for a bunch of strangers. But,” she holds up a finger, “if you can figure out something he _wants_ to let you out of the house for, then you’d just have to wait a week or two before bringing up the volunteering.”

After a little scheming, they hit on the idea of self-defense lessons.

“I just haven’t felt safe,” Sarah says, trying not to feel too dirty by saying it. “Since what happened to Kyle, I mean.”

It isn’t a lie, exactly.  If the police have found any leads regarding Kyle’s death, they haven’t shared it with anyone, although the word about town is that the killing was gang-related. Even now, stir-crazy as she is, the thought of walking abroad at nighttime alone, listening for footsteps, tensed for a blow…

The first blow, the detective said, had come from behind.

It’s true that she doesn’t feel safe.

It’s just not honest.

“I think it’s a sensible idea,” Irene chimes in. “Very mature.” From over Robert’s shoulder, she winks at her step-daughter.

The plan works like a dream. After two weeks of self-defense classes, Sarah is given leave to spend three days a week volunteering at the hospital, and by August has even gotten permission for supervised visitations with Alisse, although Alisse’s mother proves a more steadfast opposition.

But between classes, volunteering, babysitting, a newfound understanding with her step-mother and surreptitious late-night phone calls with Alisse, Sarah makes it through the summer without a major recurrence of the Great Existential Crisis of 1986.

* * *

With September comes college and a fresh start, a nine hours’ drive along I-190E away from everyone she’s ever known.

It’s both better and worse, being in a new place, a _normal_ place, untouched by any of her mistakes or her tragedies or her secrets—untouched by _him_. Home is filled with reminders of her encounters with the hidden world, but it’s also a refuge from them, providing all the comforts of familiarity. This campus, this new city, is a blank, yet to be imprinted with meaning or association, and in that absence, Sarah finds her mind drawn constantly to the Goblin King.

The best remedy, she discovers, is overstimulation. Keep her brain so busy and her body so exhausted she has neither the time nor the energy to fixate on the past. At the Freshmen Activity Fair she signs up for no fewer than fifteen different clubs, organizations, and societies (though she drops everything but club field hockey, Model UN, Film Society, Amnesty International and MASSPIRG within the first month) and develops a devotion to her academics that would have astonished most of her high school teachers.

And it’s a goddamn _revelation_ , that she can transform her anxiety into productivity, her self-doubt into self-improvement—that her demons can be a source of _energy_ , rather than added inertia. Maybe it’s for this reason that it’s so much harder, this time, to forget them.

Friendships come too, but slower and harder than before. She knows, when she thinks about it, that it’s her fault for not putting in the time or the effort, not making herself approachable. Too intense. Too driven. Too damn _busy_. Yet she can’t, when she realizes it, quite figure out how to fix it. She’s not entirely sure she _wants_ to. It doesn’t help that she’s developed something of an aversion to large parties. Eventually she finds herself adopted by a group of senior MASSPIRG members. “The Crusader,” they call her, and “mini Joan of Arc,” ruffling her hair and laughing at her irritation. She learns to appreciate microbrews and tries not to miss her high school friends too badly.

* * *

She spends Christmas and New Year’s at her Nana’s in Chicago with her father, Irene, and Toby, and the rest of her winter break with her mother and Jeremy in their elegant (though not particularly guest- or college-age-daughter-friendly) New York townhouse. Linda is effusively pleased to see her but somewhat at a loss when it comes to sustained interaction, vacillating between treating her like a precocious child and a confidante of long-standing. It seems only occasionally to occur to her that Sarah might be less than utterly delighted with her whirligig life of performances, premieres, and parties, and when it does, the concern in her face is so clearly mixed with bemusement that Sarah finds herself smothering her resentment and assuring her mother that yes, she’s having a splendid time. Either she’s a better actress than she thought, or Linda has been on stage so long that she has a hard time separating genuine from fake, because the reassurances work every time.

Jeremy—charming, handsome, sharp-eyed Jeremy—is less easily hoodwinked, and keeps dropping hints that Sarah could, if she wanted to, confide in him. But the awkwardness which has lingered between them since her parents’ divorce is not helped by the fact that Jeremy bears a slight resemblance to someone from Sarah’s past whom she would very much like to forget, and she quickly becomes adept at dodging his attempts to bond.

It’s around this time, during the endless, interstitial month before the beginning of Spring Term, that the dreams start.

* * *

When she returns to school, things feel… off. She’s as busy as ever, but rather than distracting or satisfying her, her commitments make her feel itchy. Spread thin. Everything is at once too much and too little. There’s a longing inside her, only half understood, for something _big_ , something to pour herself into, something not merely to _do_ but to _be_.

But she doesn’t know how, much less what. So instead she’s irritable and distracted. She finds herself jumping at shadows and snapping at her friends.

Then, of course, there are the dreams.

Not every night—not even most nights, but at least once a week. Sometimes, during particularly bad weeks, the dreams come three or four nights in a row.

The beginnings vary. She’ll be taking an exam for a class she’s never attended, or struggling to steer her beaten up station wagon down the Mass Turnpike, or preparing for a date with Denzel Washington, an undertaking complicated by the fact that Denzel can’t decide whether or not she’s famous enough to date, and keeps calling to cancel. But at some point in every one of these dreams, she hears her name from somewhere behind her, and, turning, finds herself _in a dark and glittering space packed with brightly dressed dancers, some with human faces and others wearing elaborate, bejeweled animal masks. The air is sliced with whirling blades of light and the music growls low and insistent._

_She looks down at herself and sees beyond the swell of her breasts great waterfalls of glimmering organza. When she hears her name spoken again and looks up into the eyes of the Goblin King, she is not surprised._

_Now they’re waltzing, twirling elegantly across the floor, the crowd forming a circle around them, silent, watching. Some part of her mind whispers that this is not normal rave behavior, but the larger part of her is lost in the drugging heat of him, in the lilting whirl of the dance. His body is like a furnace—how can anything living be that hot?—and she shivers, pressing herself closer. His laugh is a low rumble against her chest and he tightens his grip on her waist. He raises their clasped hands, brushes the hair back from her neck, and leans forward, his burning lips ghosting up along her jawline to her ear._

_“It’s time,” he murmurs._

_He steps back and suddenly, over his shoulder, through a gap in the crowd Sarah spies a familiar figure. The girl is dressed, like Sarah, in a voluminous white ball gown, but the stick-figure angle of her elbows and the mass of light brown curls identify her, even before Sarah sees her face—Alisse._

_She breaks from the Goblin King’s arms._

_“It’s time,” Jareth repeats angrily from behind her._

_“Time,” the watchers echo, as Sarah shoves her way through the crowd. “Time,” through a hundred frozen, porcelain mouths—for she sees now that every face, human or animal, is a mask._

_Alisse stands at the foot of a narrow stone staircase which thrusts up and forward into empty space. She falls to her hands and knees and begins to crawl upwards. Sarah is half the room away._

_Still the crowd barks, whistles, mutters: “Time, time.” The word is sometimes clear, sometimes distorted through strange clicks and slurps and hisses, as though the speakers are unaccustomed to human speech. She catches glimpses of strange, uncanny faces beneath the masks, of fur and scales, of yellow eyes and jagged teeth._

_Alisse is more than halfway up the staircase now, except it’s not Alisse anymore. It’s Toby, as he was five years ago, small and plump and vulnerable, and dressed in a red and white onesie. Sarah gives an inarticulate cry and pushes harder, but the crowd is beginning to close ranks now._

_“Time,” burbles the crowd, only it’s not “time” they’re saying any more. The word that’s coming back to her, garbled by a thousand grotesque and misshapen mouths, is “tithe.”_

_Suddenly, Jareth is before her, face stern. “Tithe,” he tells her. Behind him, silver flashes at the top of the staircase and Toby disappears._

_And now his arms are around her and he’s hustling her towards the staircase as the crowd parts before him. She writhes and flails in his grasp, desperate for freedom. One arm manages to work itself loose and she reaches up and tears and tears and his mask falls away—_

_Kyle’s dead, grey face stares back at her. It blinks its ruined eyes, shakes its blood-matted curls and smiles, redly._

_“Tithe,” it says, as it drags her inexorably onwards, up the stairs, far from the watching crowds below. “Tithe,” through a mouth broken and bloody, the word plopping soft and mushy from a dead man’s swollen tongue._

_A woman stands at the top of the stairs, wearing a gown like the night sky strewn with stars and holding a gleaming silver sickle. Her mask is a cat’s, and from behind it blink a cat’s green eyes. Sarah reaches up to pull the mask from her face. It peels away like dead skin. The face underneath is Alisse’s. Sarah reaches up again and again, and now the woman wears her mother’s face, now Irene’s, now her own. Before she has a chance to remove this last, cruelest of masks, there’s a sudden pressure from behind and she’s forced to her knees. Twisting around, she sees not Kyle, but the glamour the Goblin King had worn when she first encountered him at the rave—round, dark glasses and blood-bright hair._

_“Dance with me?” he asks, and forces her further down, so her head is hanging off the ledge of the staircase._

_The woman wearing Sarah’s face speaks, her voice as cool and deep and alien as the ocean._

_“The hero’s sacrifice,” she says, and out of the corner of her eye Sarah sees the silver flash of the sickle and then she’s falling upwards through space…_

* * *

“Jesus,” says Chloe van Zandt. “You’re a wreck. What’ve you been up to?” She adopts a stern expression and wags a finger in Sarah’s face. “Crack kills, you know.”

They’ve all gone for dinner in one of the dining halls after the MASSPIRG meeting. Sarah is picking at her food, apparently looking as run down as she feels.

She’s too fucking tired to joke.

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” she mutters.

Alonzo Bruno puts up his eyebrows. “Hey Mac, you hear that? Sarah’s been having trouble sleeping.”

Mac blinks. “Trouble sleeping, eh? Tough break.”

Alonzo elbows him in the side.

“What?” he asks, aggrieved.

Alonzo jerks his head towards Sarah, and Mac colors faintly.

“Oh, right. Hey, if you want something to help with that, you could maybe stop by my place tonight around ten.”

Chloe purses her lips. “Stop corrupting the frosh.”

“It’s not corrupting!” Alonzo protests. “I’m betting she’s not as straight as she looks.” He grins at Sarah. “Isn’t that right?”

“She sure as hell couldn’t be straighter,” Mac says with a teasing smile.

“They’re not corrupting me,” Sarah tells Chloe, smiling at Mac in return.

Chloe throws up her hands.

Arriving at Mac’s apartment quarter after ten, Sarah is not in the least surprised to find him, Alonzo, and a few other seniors she hasn’t met before passing around a joint.

Sarah settles down to join them, and after a few rounds, is feeling relaxed enough to show off a little. Taking a hit, she purses her lips and blows the smoke out around the tip of her tongue, forming a wobbly but distinct ring.

Alonzo raises his eyebrows. “Not a novice then?”

Sarah shrugs. “It’s just a party trick.”

“Cool trick, though.” Alonzo’s mouth curves in a wicked smile. “Kinda sexy, too. Good breath control, excellent tongue action. Your dream girl, eh, Mac?”

Mac flushes and whacks Alonzo. “Don’t be an asshole.” He turns to Sarah, ducking his head so his face is half hidden underneath his curls. “Sorry about him.”

Sarah smiles, feeling pleasantly floaty and buzzed and at ease with the world. “No need. If I’d known that’s what you looked for in a girl, I would’ve let you smoke me out sooner.”

Mac jerks his head up to stare at her. Then, a slow grin spreads across his face.

Just as advertised, the weed helps her sleep, and if she dreams that night, she doesn’t remember it.

A week later, she’s over at Mac’s once more. Alonzo and the rest of the crew are nowhere around.

“I thought,” Mac says, with a touch of diffidence, “maybe we could hang out, just the two of us.”

Sarah finds she isn’t at all averse to this suggestion, and when Mac reaches across her to fiddle with the music, she finds it perfectly natural to lean forward and kiss him.

And _oh_ but this is _nice_ , this is _pleasant_ , his large hands gliding roughly up her stomach, sliding under her bra—

“I want,” she pants into his mouth as she leans into his touch, fingers scrabbling at the buttons of his shirt. “I _want_.”

“What do you want?” he asks her, voice tender and amused, pressing kisses along the column of her throat.

She shakes her head, not knowing how to say it any truer than that, than the mere _fact_ of desire—surely that should be _enough_ —so she answers with a whimper and a thrust of her hips.

The part of her that’s watching from the sidelines observes that he’s actually quite good at this. Certainly more talented than either of her previous partners, and if her own hands know better exactly where and how to touch her, he has plenty of advantages of his own when it comes to reach, and position, and _tongue_ …

Yet the more they continue, the more maddening _nice_ and _pleasant_ become. There’s a frustration roiling in her gut, growing with every skimming caress, every gentle brush of his lips. The swirl of his tongue across her navel sends butterflies flittering through her stomach.

She doesn’t want butterflies.

She knots her fingers in his hair and pulls his head up, mashing her mouth against his. Their teeth click together unpleasantly and he draws back.

“Mac,” she whines, fingers digging into his biceps, “I need _more_.” There’s a possibility lurking on the edge of her awareness, somewhere on the other side of flesh, something sharp and transcendent and awful and unseen, and if she can just _push_ hard enough—

He gives her a sidelong grin, then nips her on the nose and goes to fish out a condom.

Then, _finally_ , he’s inside her. She clings to him, bucking upward to meet his thrusts.

“Harder,” she urges, scraping her teeth along the meat of his shoulder, “faster.”

He obeys, the motion of their bodies driving her back until her head collides with the headboard and she sees stars.

“Don’t _stop_ ,” she says, almost angrily, as he makes to withdraw.

“You’re _wild_ ,” he says, shaking his head as he tugs her further down the bed, half awed and half reproachful.

But at least he’s moving again.

“Is this it?” Mac pants over the smack of their bodies. “Is this what you want? Is it?”

 _No!_ howls the wildness inside of her, greedy and tragic and fierce.

 _Close enough_ , the rest of her thinks.

“Yes,” she tells him—tells _herself_ , willing down the wildness, the fierce, unstable longing. “Oh, _yes_.”

Perhaps all the exertion means that she processes the THC faster than usual or something, because that night, curled in Mac’s arms, their skin sticky with cooling sweat, she does dream. 

_“It’s time,” says Jareth in her ear, only tonight when she reaches up to pull off his mask it’s not Kyle’s but Mac’s face that is revealed, and Mac opens his mouth and screams—_

Sarah awakes with a start. Mac is sitting up in bed, twisted away from her, still cursing.

“Jesus,” he says, fumbling for the light. “ _Jesus_. What the fuck was that?”

She squints through sleep-bleared eyes.

“What—”

As he turns towards her, she catches sight of four long scratches on his cheek.

“Oh no. I didn’t— Oh god, Mac, I’m so sorry.”

“What the _fuck_?”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I was dreaming—” Her throat is seizing. There’s an ominous prickling at the back of her eyes.

“You were _dreaming_? What are you, Freddie Krueger? You almost clawed my fucking face off!”

“I’m really sorry, Mac. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what to say.” She presses a hand to her mouth, hiding the sudden trembling of her lips.

He looks at her, face twisting in concern and anger and fear and indecision. “Shit. Don’t cry. I mean, it’s—” He breaks off, clearly unable or unwilling to say that it’s “all right” when the evidence to the contrary is still gouged into his face and probably in need of some Bactine.

Sarah ducks her head, letting the fall of dark hair hide her face. “I think I’d better go.”

He opens his mouth as if to argue, then shuts it. She’s already half off the bed, sheets shoved aside, one arm crossed over her bare chest, the other groping on the floor for her underwear.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Maybe that would be a good idea.”

* * *

The next few weeks are spent hiding in the library, going to meals at irregular hours, and generally doing everything she can to avoid Mac and his friends. She schedules a session with one of the school counsellors, who tells her she’s spreading herself too thin and suggests regular therapy sessions, which strikes Sarah as an excellent way to get herself a one-way ticket to the funny farm.

Finally, Chloe van Zandt runs her to ground in her dorm room. Sarah’s roommate looks from Chloe to Sarah and back again, then flees, muttering something about a forgotten assignment, an act of treachery that leaves Sarah plotting dire vengeance.

Chloe speaks first.

“Sorry, what?” asks Sarah, who is still glaring after the unfortunate Marjan.

“I _said_ ,” Chloe repeats, “Where’ve you been? I’ve never known you to miss a meeting before, and you just missed three in a row. What’s up?”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve been busy.”

“Did something happen with you and Mac?” Chloe demands.

Sarah stiffens. “No. Of course not. Why would you think that?”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because he’s been drooling over for months now, and then Alonzo lured you into his little stoner circle and spent a week crowing about how he’s the world’s best wingman, and now Mac’s walking around with bandages on his cheek looking like someone’s hit him in the balls with a frying pan and you’re skipping meetings, holed up in your dorm room. It’s not like it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that something went down between the two of you. Come on, spill.”

“There’s nothing to spill.”

“Sarah, I’m _on your side_.”

“What side is that?”

Chloe makes an exasperated noise. “I don’t know, you tell me!”

For a brief moment, Sarah does consider telling her—how she and Mac had finally hooked up, and it had all... ‘gone south’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. But then she would have to explain the dreams, which means she’d have to explain about what happened last summer, which means—

She clenches her jaw.

“Nothing happened,” she says. “I’ve just been really busy. Sorry if I worried you, or whatever.”

Chloe stares at her for a moment, then slaps a piece of paper down on Sarah’s desk.

“My chief at Emergency Services told me I should look for recruits for next year, since a bunch of us are graduating. We don’t take freshmen, so it can be hard to find new people. It takes some training, but you can do it easy over the summer, and the department will subsidize the cost. I thought you might be interested, since you’ve got that world-saving fetish.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Sure. Maybe.”

Chloe snorts and turns to go. In the doorway she pauses.

“You know you can talk to me, right? About anything?”

“Yeah,” says Sarah, not looking at her. “Thanks, Clo. Really.”

She picks up the paper in front of her. _Be a hero in YOUR community_ , it reads. _Save lives and volunteer as an EMT_ _with Amherst EMS._

“Well,” says Chloe, finally. “Just let me know, okay?”

After a beat or two, Sarah hears the door close. She’s still staring down at the flier. _Save lives and volunteer…_

It takes her three days to swallow her pride and go track down Chloe and admit that, yes, something _had_ happened between her and Mac, and, no, it _wasn’t_ Mac’s fault and she _really_ didn’t want to talk about it and could Chloe please tell her a bit more about this whole EMT business?

Chloe, while being perfectly gracious and helpful and forgiving, has a little too much of the air of “I told you so” about her for Sarah’s taste.

But Sarah forgives her for that. Because she has a goal now, even if it’s a short term goal, and that, more than anything else, is what gets her through the rest of the year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter that had to be split. Character development, blargh, I know. Just one more chapter for Sarah to grow up in/for scenes to be set in, and then we return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming of existential threats and devilishly compelling antagonists for Chapter 7 (“Somebody Moves”). Chapters 5 and 6 have been a beast to write (honestly this chapter can still use work but it’s time for it to get OFF MY COMPUTER so we can all move on), so thanks for sticking with me! In case it’s not clear by this point, this is going to be a fairly lengthy story: my ridiculously detailed outline projects 33 chapters, but given how often I’ve had to split chapters so far, it could be as many as 40. To those of you who have expressed a desire for smut, it is coming (oh it IS coming, and please do not take this chapter as a predictor of its sexiness levels—that was deliberately-unsatisfying backstory/character-development sex, not smexy OTP foe-yay sex) but it’ll take us a little while to get there.
> 
> Hope all the OCs aren’t too grating—the focus of this story will still overwhelmingly be on Sarah and Jareth, but there are literally three humans in Labyrinth besides Sarah, and they’re all related to her, and I’m not good enough to build an interesting world with only two complex characters (who live on different plains of reality and are enemies at that). If it helps, none of her college friends will play a role in our later story. Feel free to forget them.
> 
> Soundtrack:
> 
> “Two Small Deaths,” by Wye Oak.
> 
> “Wild Creatures,” by Neko Case.
> 
> “Tell Me a Story,” by Iggy Pop.
> 
> “This Year,” by The Mountain Goats.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left kudos and especially to **PinkGlitterMasturbation** , **Jayenn** , **Asmolcat** , **nightangelerik** , **Exulansis** , **incandescent** , **Lin** , and **JessaClaireHarper** for reviewing, you lovely, lovely humans! And an especial big thanks to my wonderful beta **syntheticaesthetic** for contriving to rescue this chapter/my sanity.
> 
> Obviously your feedback is meat and drink to me (I'm actually a veggie, but "Quorn and drink" doesn't have the same ring...), but I admit to some slight trepidation on this occasion. More Jareth soon, but for the meantime, be gentle, I prithee!
> 
> All the love!
> 
> Silks


	6. Five Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What it says on the tin, give or take.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken some liberties with regards to Sarah's hometown, because none of the filming locations were anywhere near large enough to contain a decent rave scene. Robbinsville, Ohio is an imaginary municipality in the greater Cleveland area which bears strange and startling resemblances to Upper Nyack, NY; Haverstraw, NY; West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire; and a mysteeeeerrious set constructed for no apparent purposes at Elstree Studios in 1985. I've been to Ohio twice (and by been to, I mostly mean "driven through"), so I'm basically an expert, and this seems plausible to me. It's a place with things. Some of those things are buildings. Others are parks and trees. #noresearchwednesdays #authorialprerogative #ignoranteastcoaster #dealwithit
> 
> Betaed by the many-talented syntheticaesthetic (find her work linked in my favorite authors). Seriously, she went above and beyond on this soul-destroying monster of a chapter. She rocks.
> 
> TW for referenced self-harm

** Chapter 6 **

**Five Years**

* * *

_I think I saw you in an ice cream parlor,_  
_Drinking milk shakes, cold and long,_  
_Smiling and waving and looking so fine_  
_Don't think you knew you were in this song…_

 _We've got five years, stuck on my eyes._  
_Five years, what a surprise._  
_Five years: my brain hurts a lot._  
_Five years, that's all we've got._

"Five Years," David Bowie.

* * *

 _Emptied onto shifting sheets,_  
_Wearing rosary holes in my ceiling,_  
_Waiting for my purpose to deliver,_  
_And reveal itself to me._

"Bracing for Sunday," Neko Case.

* * *

**Summer, 1991**

Summer brings a return to Ohio, and, for a few awful weeks, all the trauma of the previous year. The town is rancid with memory and nowhere more so than her own home. She'd just about borne it last summer. She hadn't had the dreams to deal with then.

Her first week back, they come every night. It had been bad enough, in the weeks following the Mac incident, dying night after night in a flash of silver, only to wake, sweat-soaked and shivering, with Marjan slumbering peacefully just across the room. In the wake of Chloe's visit and Sarah's newfound resolution, the nightmares had receded a little. But now—

Now she's home again, tucked into her childhood bed, and the history in the room rises up to choke her.

" _And remember, fair maiden, should you ever need us…"_

" _Yes, should you need us, for any reason at all…"_

" _I need you," she'd said, voice half-choked on desperation and longing. She'd needed them, and they had come and for a few hours, her tiny, childish, junk-filled room had been baptized anew with magic and friendship and possibility._

_When she woke in the morning, she'd known—known, somehow, on a deep and visceral level that went beyond certainty—that it had been a dream, but strangely, that hadn't dampened her optimism, and she'd gone to the mirror and called out:_

" _Hoggle! Ludo! Sir Didymus!"_

_No one had responded, of course. She hadn't really expected that they would, and so she wasn't disappointed, but instead went on with her morning, and as soon as lunch was finished, ran back upstairs to try again._

_By the end of the first week, she was holding out for the thirteenth day. Thirteen hours Underground, thirteen days Above—a perfect and irresistible symmetry. And still, every morning, every evening, and every stolen moment between, a litany of need, a poisonous hope:_

" _Sir Didymus! Hoggle! Ludo!"_

_On the morning of the fourteenth day, she'd pulled the hangings off her bed, tore the Escher print from her wall, and bagged up all her toys. The ones she could still bear to look at—whose faces she had never seen bright and animated with a life she'd never thought to dream of—were put aside for Toby. The rest went into a sack labeled "for charity," which she tossed onto a pile of similar sacks in the corner of the garage. Irene would never know the difference._

Now, awakening from dreams of Goblin Kings and masquerades and cat-eyed women with death in their hands and upon their tongues, she stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom. The witching hour, they'd called this time of night once, between the hours of three and four when all the world was asleep. Sarah passes it staring down the porcelain curve of the toilet bowl, nose filled with the stench of bleach and the taste of bile sour on her tongue.

The daylight hours bring their own anxieties.

A year, it seems, hasn't been enough to resolve last summer's tension. Monica still won't talk to her; Mike, as always, follows Monica's lead. Andre appears to bear less of a grudge but sides with Mike. Christine and Sarah share one exquisitely awkward lunch date ("A lunch date!" Sarah complains to Alisse afterwards. "Like, how old does she think we are?"), which, according to an unspoken agreement, is never repeated, though at least they smile when they pass one another in the street.

But there's Alisse, loyal as ever, brimming with spitfire and indignation and a savage wit that fires a mixture of gossip and _ad hominem_ s behind the backs, and, with a frequency as satisfying as it is embarrassing, to the faces of Sarah's detractors. And if it's a style of conflict management which inevitably involves a lot more burning than building of bridges, at least it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Alisse's support isn't enough to numb the sting of rejection completely, but as the days pass, Sarah finds herself with less and less time to dwell on her lackluster social life. As if her day job as a camp counselor and her babysitting duties at home weren't distractions enough, she's started her EMT training: six hours Tuesday and Thursday evenings, twelve hours on Saturday, and a volume of homework that would awe even her most draconian professors. By midsummer, Sarah can barely remember what having a normal social life is like, let alone find the time or mental energy to mourn its loss.

Beneath the exhaustion, there lurks a strange excitement. It comes to her late one night as she pours over her EMT textbook. _I'm becoming myself._ The thought is a fragile and delicate thing, not yet a truth, but—just maybe—the seed of one.

Gradually, the nightmares subside and are replaced with dreams about tachycardia, blowout fractures, and cerebrospinal fluid.

"What's got you so chipper?" Alisse demands.

"Stress dreams," Sarah says happily.

She'd dreamed the night before that she was taking the final exam for EMT certification, which for some reason had consisted entirely of questions about Bob Dylan's early eighties discography. "But the early eighties were his lost years!" she'd protested. "Everyone knows that!" It hadn't been a particularly pleasant dream, but the very fact that she was having nightmares about something so _normal_ …

Alisse gives a despairing shake of the head. "God, you're weird."

"I may be weird," Sarah acknowledges cheerfully, "but I'm also driving. So, you can be nice to me, or you can walk to the concert. Your call!"

"Fascist," Alisse accuses, making a swipe for the keys.

Sarah thrusts them into the air, smiling down at her friend with all the superiority of 5'7" over 5'1". She presses her spare hand over her heart and flutters her eyelashes. " _Your_ fascist."

As it turns out, Alisse isn't the only remaining ally Sarah has among her high school friends. Ernie Ling, in typically idiosyncratic Ernie fashion, has spent most of the summer in Vermont studying German, but he returns home for a few weeks before school starts and makes a point of tracking her down. They'd never been much more than friendly at school, and Sarah is as bemused as touched by the effort.

"We should hang out during term sometime," Ernie suggests. "You're at Amherst, right?"

Sarah's babysitting again that night, but the family car had hardly pulled out of the garage before she'd heard a rap at the backyard gate. She'd opened it to find Ernie with his niece in tow, a surprisingly warlike seven-year-old who was no sooner introduced to her host's younger brother than she opened fire on him from an artfully concealed Nerf blaster. Ernie presented Sarah with his own offering—a six-pack of White Mountain coolers—and they'd settled down together to watch the carnage.

"UMass," she agrees now, raising her bottle in toast.

Ernie clinks it. "Wicked. That's only, like, three hours from Ithaca!"

Sarah wrinkles her nose. "Four and a half."

He waves this away. "Three, four and a half, whatever. Don't be such a buzzkill, Williams. We'll work something out."

Somewhat to Sarah's surprise, they do.

* * *

**Autumn, 1991**

She receives her EMT qualifications just in time for the start of the fall semester. Her new EMT duties, combined with the increased workload of her second year, leave her with less time than ever for a normal social life, but since most of her upperclassmen friends have graduated, this is more a boon than anything else.

In addition to her increased workload, pressure comes from the need to choose a major. After some minor soul-searching—she falls half in love with anthropology at the beginning of the semester, but discards it as an option as soon as she realizes it requires several modules on world mythology (and surely she's had enough of myths and legends to last a lifetime)—she declares a major in political science with a minor in international development: practical, real-world, certain to please her father, and an excellent foundation for any number of possible careers as a do-gooder.

"I'm not sure that's an actual job title," says Ernie, who is visiting from Cornell. "Maybe try something a bit more specific?"

He plucks off his glasses and holds them in front of her face. "Sarah Williams," he says, making his voice deep and plummy, "international diplomat."

He squints at her for a moment, then shakes his head. "Nah, can't see it."

"You can't see anything like that," Sarah accuses, laughing. "Put those back on!"

With one hand, she sweeps her hair into a twisty updo; the other she extends elegantly towards him, wrist first.

"Sarah Williams," she drawls. "Philanthropist."

"Sarah Williams," he counters, putting a fist on his hip and striking a noble pose, "professional heroine!"

The good humor drains away from her at once.

"I thought you said I should shoot for something more specific," she says, forcing a smile.

"Heroine is plenty specific! I can just see it—Sarah Williams, Professional Heroine. Slayer of manticores, rescuer of princesses, vanquisher of villains… You could get business cards and everything."

"Yeah," she says, getting to her feet. "Sorry, have to go to the bathroom."

In the bathroom, she dabs at her face with cold water.

"Get it together," she tells her reflection.

It wasn't just the sudden rush of memory that had discomposed her—the lingering sting of failure, the weight of the secret heavy on her tongue. It was the twist of longing beneath her ribs as he mapped out her imaginary future. _Sarah Williams, Professional Heroine_.

"Grow the fuck up," she snaps, tossing the towel at the mirror, and turns off the light.

* * *

**Spring, 1992**

The need to choose a major isn't the only thing that makes sophomore year memorable. Halfway through spring term, Alisse turns up on her doorstep with a suitcase and a determinedly cheerful expression.

"Cut you off?" Sarah repeats, aghast, wedging Alisse's overstuffed duffel bag into the corner next to the sofa.

"Without a cent!"

"Jesus. That must've been some fight."

"Remember the summer I turned fourteen, when I told my mom I didn't want to be confirmed and she packed me off to my aunt's in Indiana?"

As it happens, Sarah remembers that summer quite well for a number of reasons, least among them the latest skirmish in the civil war that has been raging in the Rochefort household ever since Alisse spat the grape juice back into the cup at her first communion.

Not that she can ever tell Alisse as much. Much less what those reasons _are_.

So she just says, "Yeah, I remember."

Alisse takes a breath. "So, like, _that_ , only about a million times worse."

Sarah sucks in a sympathetic breath. "What happened?"

"Told her I was a lesbian," Alisse says, in what is probably supposed to be an offhand tone of voice. "She didn't take it well."

Sarah winces. Mrs. Rochefort thinks AIDS is a judgment on the sodomites.

"Yeah," she says, "I reckon that'd do it."

For a moment, she looks at Alisse—really _looks_ at her, noting the tension in her shoulders and the poorly masked anxiety on her face.

"Oh, c'mere," she says, stepping forward and slinging an arm around her friend's shoulders.

It's awkward at first. Sarah isn't much of a "touchy" person these days—in fact, the last time she can remember spontaneously expressing physical affection for someone other than her baby brother, she and her friend were dumped into a certain bog of eternal infamy, which is the sort of thing which tends to leave an impression.

Then Alisse turns into the embrace, and they're hugging properly, and Alisse is muttering, "You are literally the worst hugger I've ever met," and everything is all right again.

"We always knew your mom was a stone-cold bitch," Sarah says, once they've pulled apart. "My lease goes to the end of May, but if you don't get sick of sleeping on the couch first, we can hunt around for a new place then."

Alisse looks at her from under her lashes. "I kind of thought I could get the bed, and you would take the sofa," she says, innocently. "Since, you know, I'm being _persecuted_ and shit."

Sarah grins and chucks her on the arm. "Keep dreaming."

* * *

**Fall, 1993**

Alisse acquires a job and a girlfriend in record time, although the latter is soon dropped in favor of classes at the local community college ("Only so many hours in the day!" she tells Sarah blithely). Sarah's roommate, unprepared for a hard-drinking, irrepressible, semi-permanent houseguest, moves in with her boyfriend, and Alisse takes over her room and her share of the lease.

Time passes. Sarah's life, as she approaches graduation, becomes a complex tapestry of classes, homework, extracurriculars, EMT duties, stressing out about graduation plans, dates, breakups, boozy pity parties with Alisse, more classes. Mundanity piles upon mundanity until Sarah is left with a tottering heap of _normal_ that dwarfs the few, semi-suppressed memories and vague sense of malaise that are all that remain of her encounters with the supernatural.

It's only occasionally that something happens to bring her memories of the hidden world back in force.

It's a Thursday in October of her senior year. It's her duty night, and she's sitting in the kitchen, trying to wrap her brain around the finer points of Keynesian economics when the call comes: barbiturate overdose, possible attempted suicide.

The address is only two blocks from her apartment. Sarah's stomach lurches as she realizes she's beaten the ambulance to the scene.

Hammering on the front door, she runs through the pre-hospital treatment for barbiturate overdose in her mind: _Keep the patient upright. Secure the patient's breathing. Do not, under any circumstances, let the patient fall asleep._ She's just preparing to force her way in when the door opens.

A young woman stands in the doorway. She's pale—almost ashen—and there's a dazed sort of vulnerability in her gaze.

The sight strikes a faint note of discord within her—the dispatcher had said the patient was alone.

Sarah ignores it.

"I'm with Amherst Emergency Medical Services," she says rapidly. "We're responding to an emergency call made from this location."

A spark of recognition. "Right, of course."

The night is cool and crisp, but the air inside the apartment is stuffy—crowded—filled with a strange, unidentifiable heaviness.

It makes Sarah's brain itch.

She twitches her shoulders, trying to shake off the tension like a horse shakes off a fly. _Focus_ , she tells herself. Her eyes are already scanning the room. "Where's the patient?"

"Here," says the girl. A faint wash of color enters her cheeks. "I mean, it's me."

For a split second, Sarah only stares at her. The dispatcher had said the patient had taken a dozen sleeping pills with half a glass of vodka. Yet here she is, standing upright and unsupported and apparently lucid. In spite of herself, she feels a faint frisson of apprehension. Something here doesn't… _feel_ right.

As she conducts her examination, Sarah's urgency fades, supplanted by puzzlement and a growing unease. The girl—Tiffany—displays no symptoms of an overdose or even intoxication. Her pulse, breathing, and blood pressure are normal, her pupils undilated, her speech clear and cogent, her coordination unimpaired. The only thing out of the ordinary is the smell which clings to her, something sweet and clean and inexplicably familiar.

Tiffany insists that she feels no effects from the drugs. She's not tired, she tells Sarah. "Except emotionally, maybe," she adds with a faint, self-conscious smile. She furrows her brow. "I was before though. When I made the call. Tired, I mean, and I kept—" her voice catches "—kept knocking things over. I was trying to dial 911 but I could barely press the buttons and my voice wasn't working right. And then—" She frowns suddenly. "I can't actually remember. But after _that_ I was feeling okay, and then you showed up."

This loss of memory comes up again and again, though from Sarah's understanding of the timeline it couldn't encompass more than a few minutes. Tiffany doesn't feel nauseous and she doesn't remember throwing up. She doesn't remember taking any other drugs.

"I don't even remember opening the window," she says, helplessly, gesturing to where curtains flutter gently in a breeze that entirely fails to dispel the thickness in the air.

"It looks like you've been very lucky so far," Sarah says finally. "But we'll still need to get you to the hospital for observation and testing."

She puts a little weight on "testing." If Tiffany is lying, it's possible the word will throw her.

The girl just nods. "Yeah." She shakes her head. "The whole thing—it's so weird, to think I— Like I'm dreaming it, except I know I'm awake. You know?"

A tingle of recognition creeps up Sarah's spine. She knows. It's all part and parcel with the déjà vu that's been shadowing her since she first stepped through the door. As she bends down to take Tiffany's pulse once more she catches another whiff of that strange, sweet smell, and in a sudden, disconcerting rush of memory, she recognizes it.

_The storm hung heavy in the air, thick with the scent of petrichor and ozone. Outside the window, lightning crackled and raced across the sky. She hadn't known then—how could she?—that this was more than just another summer storm, and so she dismissed the disquieting sense of presence, the charged expectation that permeated the room, filled her lungs and sent tingles shivering down her spine._

_She'd heard the creaks and rustling in the shadows and taken them for mice in the woodwork, for the sounds of the house settling. And the voices—strange voices, _insinuating_ _voices_ —that whispered and chittered at the edge of hearing_ _, these she took for her own thoughts. She opened her mouth to speak—old words, powerful and treacherous, and never guessed they were not her own._

" _I wish—"_

A sudden creaking sound startles her out of her reverie. She drops Tiffany's wrist. The two women exchange looks, one vague and inquiring, the other taut and controlled.

Sarah speaks first.

"When is your roommate due home?"

Tiffany blinks at her. "What roommate?"

Sarah's heart begins to pound.

"Stay here."

Slowly, she rises to her feet, careful to angle herself so she stands between her patient and the source of the noise.

Another creak, louder now, from outside the front door, followed by a rustling—

_(—from the crib, sheets flailing with uninfantlike movement to the echo of strange, creaking laughter—)_

—in the corridor. Then, a thud that rattles the door, once, and then again, harder.

(— _windows shuddering against the beating of wings_ —)

Sarah wraps her fingers around the doorknob and yanks the door open, just as a voice outside begins to speak.

"This is Amherst Emergency—oh."

The adrenaline deserts her all at once and she sags against the doorframe.

"Didn't realize you'd beaten us here," says Joey Cochrane, picking up the EMT bag from where he'd dropped it outside the door. "Roy's waiting out front."

"Who is it?" Tiffany calls, voice tinged with concern, and Sarah could have kicked herself for upsetting her patient with her stupid, baseless paranoia. _Get a grip_.

"It's all right," she says. "The ambulance is here."

* * *

The arrival of ambulance brings with it the reassurance of routine and Sarah's anxiety drains away as she and Joey help Tiffany onto the gurney and settle her in the ambulance.

Her relief is short-lived. Their usual ambulance driver, it seems, is off sick, forcing Roy, the most experienced among them and the only one who can reliably keep Joey in line, to take his place behind the wheel, and leaving Sarah and Joey to manage the patients alone. Joey is a competent enough EMT, but he thinks tact is something you use to attach things to bulletin boards, and he makes no effort to hide how implausible he finds Tiffany's story.

"BP 110 over 70," Sarah tells him. "Pulse of 60 bpm."

Joey just grunts.

"We should administer supplemental oxygen—"

"She's breathing _fine_ ," he says, impatiently. "Look at her."

Sarah has to admit he has a point.

Tiffany snatches at Sarah's sleeve. "What are you talking about?"

"Just discussing how best to take care of you." She smiles reassuringly. "Nothing to worry about."

Tiffany narrows her eyes at Joey. "He doesn't believe me, does he?" she says in a low voice.

Joey rolls his eyes and turns his head away.

"It's _true_ ," Tiffany insists in growing agitation. "You think I would _lie_ about something like that?" She turns to Sarah. "You believe me, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Sarah soothes.

"I wanted to _die_ ," Tiffany says, white-knuckled hands writhing in her lap. She bites her lip. "Or, I thought I did. And then, by the time I realized…" She ends on a whisper. "Too late."

"It's not too late," says Sarah firmly. "You've been doing really well so far, and the hospital is filled with doctors and nurses who will make sure it stays that way."

But the floodgates are open.

"I remember wishing— _praying_ —that something would happen to save me. I would have given _anything_ …" She trails off, bowing her head over her clasped hands, her forehead creasing in some effort of intense concentration.

"Tiffany?" Sarah says, after a minute.

Tiffany raises her head and looks at her through dreamy, shell-shocked eyes.

"Do you believe in angels?"

Unbidden, an image flashes into Sarah's mind unbidden of a beautiful, otherworldly face surrounded by a nimbus of pale hair. She remembers the tension in the apartment, the strange thickness in the air, the sweet, incongruous scent of summer storms. _Wishing_ , Tiffany had said…

Angrily, she shoves the thought aside.

"You're saying an angel healed you," Joey says, flatly.

Sarah shoots him a warning glance.

Tiffany doesn't appear to notice. "No," she says, hunching her shoulders. Then: "I don't know. I thought…" She begins to fidget, shifting restlessly in her seat. "For a second, I— But I can't—" She presses her clasped hands to her mouth, then, with a sudden, violent motion, flings them aside. "Why can't I _remember_?"

"Hey," Sarah says. "Hey, I'm sure it'll come back. No need to think about that now. Focus on staying calm—we'll be at the hospital soon."

Obediently, Tiffany settles down. Sarah takes her blood pressure and pulse again: both slightly elevated, but still normal.

After a moment, Tiffany speaks.

"I hope it _was_ an angel," she says in a small voice. "I really, _really_ …" She trails off. And then, so low that Sarah has to lean forward to hear: "Because if it _wasn't_ — If it was something _else_ …"

Sarah and Joey exchange looks.

"Tiffany, I don't understand. What do you mean, 'if it wasn't'?"

Silence.

"Is there something you haven't told us?" Sarah urges.

Tiffany whirls on her, eyes bright and glassy, almost feverish. "I keep telling you, I don't _remember_. How can I tell you anything if I _can't remember_?" Her voice climbs alarmingly on the last words.

Joey tenses and Sarah lifts a hand: _Wait_.

"I'm sorry," she says to Tiffany. "Of course you can't tell us anything you don't remember."

Tiffany's shoulders slump. She scrubs a hand over her face. "It's not— I don't— I keep getting glimpses. Like— like flashes of movement in a darkened mirror. But I can't seem to _hold_ it."

She lapses into silence.

"Memories can be like that," Sarah says after a moment. "It's a good sign that you're remembering anything at all. But you can't force it. You have to let it—"

Tiffany stiffens, sucking in a rattling breath.

"What's wrong? Tiffany?"

Tiffany has begun to tremble. "No," she whispers. "No, no. I didn't— It's not true, I _couldn't_ — Oh _please_ —" She chokes.

Sarah crouches in front of her, taking Tiffany's hands in her own. "Tiffany, listen to me."

Tiffany lifts her head, and the look in her eyes is like nothing Sarah has ever seen.

"I gave it away," she says slowly, almost drunkenly. "A bargain, he said. He asked me and I _gave it away_."

" _Listen_ ," Sarah says, fighting to keep the urgency from her voice, to stay firm and even and reassuring, just like she's been trained. "We're pulling into the hospital now. Just stay calm. Everything's going to be _fine_ —"

A wail of rage and anguish rips from Tiffany's throat.

"Fine? _Fine?_ You stupid bitch, don't you know?" She tears her hands from Sarah's and seizes her by the arms, clawlike fingers gouging deep into her flesh. "Don't you _know_?"

Joey is out of his seat, arms wrapping around Tiffany from behind and pulling her away from Sarah, just as the ambulance comes to a stop. There's the sound of a door slamming as Roy Everett leaps out of the ambulance cab and yanks open the doors, as Tiffany gabbles away, body jerking convulsively in Joey's grasp.

"A bargain, he said, and I said _anything_ and now it's gone, it's gone, it's _gone_! Don't you _understand_?"

"Secure her legs," Roy instructs. "Gently, now!"

Tiffany's voice soars above them like the voice of some oracle of old. " _An angel of the Lord came down from heaven. His face was like lightning and his clothes black as pitch_ and he asked me and I said—I said—"

She gasps and stiffens, eyes bugging, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. For one terrible moment she freezes like that, a perfect, unnatural stillness. Then she collapses in Joey's arms, keening like a wounded animal as great, pulling sobs wrack her frame.

Between the three of them, they manage to safely secure her to the gurney. Her tears slowly subside. By the time the ER nurses wheel her away, she's stopped entirely. Her eyes are lifeless—flat, pale pebbles in a face swollen from weeping. They flick once towards Sarah, then away again, up towards the ceiling. Then she passes through the doors and is gone.

Roy stops them on the way back to the ambulance. "You two all right?"

"I'm fine," Joey says. "Sarah's the one who—"

"It's nothing," Sarah says, curtly, turning half away to hide the trembling in her hands. "Just a little bruised, that's all."

Roy frowns. "Someone really ought to take a look…"

"Joey can do it on the way back."

"Sure," Joey says. He shakes his head. "What was that stuff she was saying, angels and lightning and shit?"

"It's Matthew," Roy says. "' _Suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, rolled away the stone, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow._ ' It's about the Resurrection."

Joey snorts. "Yeah, that fits. She got it wrong though. About the clothes."

"Well I'm sorry her psychotic break didn't meet your exacting standards," Sarah snaps.

Joey puts up his hands. "Whoa, jeez. Just saying."

She passes a hand over her face. "I need a smoke."

Roy lays a meaty hand on her shoulder. Sarah—to her credit—doesn't flinch. "Just as soon as we get to the firehouse."

She opens her mouth to protest.

"We need to be there in case there's another emergency," Roy reminds her gently.

This time she does flinch. "Right," she says. "Of course. Sorry." She turns around before he can say another word and heads back into the ambulance.

* * *

Behind the firehouse twenty minutes later, under the yellow glow of the parking lot lights, she rolls her cigarette with a shaking hand, trying not to think of Tiffany's thousand-yard stare, of the emptiness in her eyes as they wheeled her into the ER.

Eyes, they said, were windows to the soul.

Voices echo through her mind in eerie counterpoint.

" _A bargain, he said—"_

_("It's an old bargain.")_

"— _and I said anything, and now it's_ _gone_ _!"_

_("I will preserve their life. In exchange for their soul.")_

Then:

" _Do you believe in angels?"_

In the eye of her memory, she sees once again a halo of wild golden hair.

She gives her head a little shake and takes a drag on her cigarette. She's not thinking rationally. What evidence is there, really? A mentally ill woman claimed to have attempted suicide and implied that she'd been miraculously healed by an angel. She also claimed to have made some sort of bargain, presumably with the angel, which apparently involved giving something away.

Which, now she's thought it through, is no evidence at all. Her father would laugh it out of a courtroom.

She takes another defiant puff.

The parking lot is a little island of artificial light, lost in a lake of darkness. As she inhales, the edges of the light seem to contract, as though the darkness is breathing along with her.

She stares into the middle distance. The little woodland that fringes the parking lot is a patchwork of shadows. If she focuses long enough on any one patch, the others begin to dance and flicker at the edges of her vision.

 _Like seeing movement in a darkened mirror_.

Frowning, she steps forward. There's something faint, just on the edge of hearing—a low susurration of movement, the crackle of branches.

That strange, buzzing, edge-of-the-teeth feeling is rising again, though she can't tell this time if the tension is in the atmosphere or in _her_.

More shifting and rustling in the undergrowth. Then a brief, faint crackle of—is that _laughter_? Surely not. It sounded like dry twigs snapping. She turns her head, craning for the source. Something moves in the corner of her eye and she snaps her head back.

Has that shadow always been there, tall and slender under the trees?

Slowly, she turns her head from side to side. The shadow doesn't flicker, doesn't change its shape, doesn't move in the slightest.

She steps forward, narrowing her eyes. If she could only _see_ … If she strains, she can just about make out the vague outlines of tree trunks and bushes in the surrounding woods, even the faint texture of leaves, but _here_ — Nothing but a long black streak, a shade or two darker than the shadows surrounding it.

Her cigarette, left to smolder unregarded, is little more than a stub now, hot against her fingertips. She lets it fall. Its light is only a distraction. She takes another step forward, then another. Still the shadow refuses to resolve into anything meaningful.

She stops at the edge of the circle of light. The shadow is no more than a dozen feet away from her now.

"Hello?" she calls, low and hesitant.

No response.

She almost speaks his name then, catching the word just before it falls from her lips. Surely just speaking it could do her no harm, and yet…

Biting her tongue, she stares furiously into that obstinate patch of blackness.

A thought comes to her then, and she catches her breath on the blasphemy of it. She could… leave. Turn around and just walk away, out of this world of twilit ambiguities, of half-formed threats and crawling shadows. She chokes on a hysterical giggle. Wouldn't that just _show_ them?

She doesn't move.

 _Cross that threshold_ , something in her warns, _and there's no going back._ As she thinks it, she knows it to be true, that even if—as is surely the case—there's nothing there but the projections of a mind tired and troubled searching for meaning in chaos, she'll still have _made the choice_.

But to walk away… To not _know_ … After what's happened? After what she's _seen_? (Tiffany's eyes, large and haunted: _Do you believe in angels?_ )

She stands, swaying slightly on the balls of her feet. Forward or back, that's the question. Any second now, she'll take that step. Any second now… She takes one great lungful of October air and shuts her eyes.

"Sarah!"

She whirls around.

The figure before her is half in shadow under the uneven glare of the parking lot lights, but she'd know him anywhere. Nothing supernatural, she thinks, cruel in her relief, would have quite so much baby fat.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to sneak up on women in empty parking lots?"

"I called your name, like, five times!" Joey says indignantly. "What are you, deaf?"

"I thought I saw something," she mutters.

"What, like a deer or something?"

"Or something."

She stares past him, tightening her shoulders.

Joey is silent a moment, waiting for her to elaborate. When she doesn't, he says, "Right, well. Roy sent me to check on you. He said you'd need a ride home."

She opens her mouth to refuse, and hesitates.

That taut, prickling sense of expectation has faded—the moment has passed—but the thought of walking home now, starting at every broken twig, every puff of air, every strange shadow…

"That'd be great, thanks."

"Cool," says Joey, relieved. "Just give me a moment to clear out the passenger's seat…"

He's already walking towards the car. Sarah holds back a moment, twisting around for one last look at the woods. The shadow—if it was ever truly there—is gone, faded back into the piebald darkness. Her throat tightens around a sudden knot of emotion: embarrassment, apprehension, relief, resentment, and loss all twisted up together so she can scarcely tell where one ends and another begins.

Then, with a twitch of her shoulders, she turns her back on the darkness, combs her fingers through her hair, and follows Joey to the car.

* * *

**Spring, 1994**

Sarah graduates _cum laude_ with a GPA of 3.6. Robert Williams has contacted an old buddy from law school and arranged work for her as a paralegal at a well-regarded Boston law firm.

"You can do a lot of good as a lawyer, you know," he'd said. Then, when Sarah still hesitated, "Give it a try. Just for a year or so. Then, if you don't like it, you can always quit and go…clothe the naked or save the whales, or whatever it is you want to do with your life."

The truth is, Sarah's got no notion what she wants to do with her life, though she's pretty sure whales aren't a major factor. The closest she's come to figuring out a career is the brainstorming she and Ernie did two years before, and "professional do-gooder" _still_ isn't an actual job-title.

She takes the job.

"Just for now," she tells Alisse. "Just until I find something better."

"Boston is better," Alisse says. "I could do Boston."

"Ernie's in Boston," Sarah informs her. "He's starting his PhD in sociology this fall."

"Always knew he was a brainy fucker."

"Yeah."

They stand in silence for a moment. Then Alisse nudges Sarah in the ribs.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey what?"

"Don't sweat it. About the future or whatever. You'll figure it out. We've got time."

"Time," Sarah echoes, tasting the word in her mouth. Then, slowly, a grin spreads across her face. "Yeah," she says. "I guess we do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, were you looking for Jareth? SO sorry, you just missed him. Twice, apparently. Unless it was all in Sarah's head. MWAHAHAHA.
> 
> For real, next chapter though, I promise. None of this ambiguity bullshit. "On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man/ With a dusty black coat[/sparkly breastplate] and a red right hand[/black leather glove]."
> 
> Should any of you be wondering what Sarah's life would be life if she were to take up heroing as a profession, allow me to direct you to JalenStrix's More Fair Than Snow and its sequels, Beauty Sleep and Deathless by Heart. Quelle genre-savvy excellence!
> 
> Soundtrack:
> 
> "Stronger Than Ever," by Raleigh Ritchie. (Did you know Grey Worm from GoT released an album? I didn't! Thanks to syntheticaesthetic for repairing my ignorance.)
> 
> "Cough Syrup," by Young the Giant.
> 
> "Seven Devils," by Florence and the Machine.
> 
> "This Protector," by The White Stripes.
> 
> "Bracing for Sunday," by Neko Case.
> 
> Thanks so much to nightangelerik, DirewolfBooks, assbuttofthelord15, and omaelmordha for reviewing! You guys make my life.
> 
> I know I'm being very disobliging by withholding the Jareth you desire and deserve (remember, you've been missing him for the past two chapters, but I've been missing him for the two months it took to write those chapters—we all suffer together!), but please do drop me a line and let me know if you're still reading! Your reviews have motivated me to keep at this through what has been an exceptionally stressful month. It's a pretty simple feedback loop: reviews = energy = story = reviews, and so and so forth, so please. Feeeeeeeeeeeedddd meeeeee.
> 
> Murch lurve,
> 
> Silks


	7. Somebody Moves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything Sarah thought she had goes to shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANGST ALERT. Beta-ed by the inimitable syntheticaesthetic.

** Chapter 7 **

**Somebody Moves**

* * *

_Then somebody moves,  
and everything you thought you had will go to shit._

“Broadripple Is Burning,” Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos

* * *

_My death waits like a bible truth  
at the funeral of my youth._

“My Death,” Jacques Brel via David Bowie

* * *

Nemesis, in the form of Massachusetts driving culture, strikes in April of 1995. Only it’s not Sarah it strikes.

It happens on a Saturday.

Sarah is an early riser, and ten o’clock that morning finds her sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through the day’s mail. She almost misses the letter, wedged as it is between a Land’s End catalog and a jury summons addressed to the previous tenant, but as she tosses the stack of mail onto the table, something slips out of the pile and flutters to the floor.

She bends over to pick it up, and freezes. She recognizes that logo, the small circle inscribed with an American flag. The return address confirms it.

God. _Shit_. She hadn’t expected this. Which is to say, she’s been expecting it for months in a general way, but she hadn’t expected it _today_. She isn’t _prepared_ for this.

Her fingers are stiff and fumbling; it takes her three tries to pick up the envelope. She rips it open, tugs out the letter inside—just a single sheet, which surely can’t mean anything good—unfolds it, and begins to read.

Two hours later, she’s kneeling in the bathtub, scrubbing industriously at the grout while her Discman blares in her ears:

_‘We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got. It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not.’_

Something red flashes at the edge of her vision. Looking up, she sees Alisse leaning against the doorframe in a pair of tatty red pajamas. She tugs the headphones from her ears.

“Hey.”

“You know the entire apartment smells like bleach and cigarette smoke?” Alisse asks conversationally.

“Oh. Uh, sorry. Just doing a bit of spring cleaning.”

Alisse’s gaze flicks pointedly from Sarah to the over-filled ashtray perched rather precariously on the tank of the toilet.

“Uh huh. So whatever… _this_ is wouldn’t have anything to do with the letter I found on the kitchen table?” Alisse brandishes a familiar looking white sheet.

Sarah’s stomach sinks.

“‘Dear Sarah,’” Alisse reads. “‘Congratulations! It is with great pleasure that we invite you to begin training for Peace Corps service—’”

“Yeah,” Sarah interrupts. “I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell you yet. Isn’t it great?”

“See, I _would’ve_ thought so,” Alisse says, refolding the paper.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the traditional way of reacting to _great news_ is not by doing your best impression of a chain-smoking Cinderella.”

“Well,” Sarah says, cracking a smile, “maybe not in _your_ culture…”

Alisse just _looks_ at her. “What’s going on, Sarah?”

“Nothing!” Sarah picks up her scouring pad and resumes scrubbing. “I’m just cleaning, like I said, and I wanted a smoke. Sorry if the smell bugs you, or whatever.”

Alisse pinches the bridge of her nose. “Okay.” She walks over to the toilet and picks up the ashtray. “Here’s how this is going to go. You tell me why you’re being a freak about this, and I don’t dump cigarette butts all over your sparkly clean shower.”

Sarah puts down the scouring pad and gets to her feet. “Don’t even think about it.”

Alisse raises the ashtray. “Try me.”

They glare at each other for a moment.

“Oh, give me that,” Sarah says crossly, stepping out of the tub and plucking the ashtray from Alisse’s hand. She dumps the contents into the trash, and rinses the ashtray out in the sink for good measure.

“And I’m _not_ being a freak, I just—”

She takes a few paces, stops, and runs her hand through her hair. Her shoulders slump. Carefully she lowers herself to the floor, leaning back against the bathtub.

 “I just thought it’d feel… _different_ ,” she says, quietly.

Alisse takes a seat on the toilet. “Different how?”

“I don’t know. Just _different_.” She tilts her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I mean, I’ve been planning this for months and imagining what everything’s going to be like and thinking about how I’m going to tell my dad and now it’s actually happened and I just…”

She trails off, unable—and unwilling—to put words to the apprehension inside her, the sudden and unlooked for doubt, and beneath it all, the sad, echoing feeling of hollowness—of _emptiness_.

Alisse finishes the sentence for her. “…thought it would feel different.”

“Right.”

“I see.” There’s a sort of resigned amusement in Alisse’s voice, underlain with something rather less pleasant, something like satisfaction. “You thought there’d be like, a clap of thunder, or a burning bush and a booming voice saying, ‘Congratulations, Sarah Williams, you are on the path to your marvelous destiny!’”

“Of course not!”

Sarah stops and thinks for a moment.

“Well, maybe,” she admits.

Is a little certainty really so much to ask for?

Alisse shakes her head. “You know I love you, but right now, honestly, _fuck_ you.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

“You’re smart, you’re talented, you’ve got determination, you’ve got a family that loves you—a family with _resources_ —and now you want… what? A divine fucking mandate?”

Sarah gapes at her. “I—”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but the world doesn’t work like that.”

“I _know_ it—”

“There aren’t any _right choices_ , there’s just _choices_. You’d know that if you ever bothered to pull your head out of your own ass for more than ten minutes at a time.”

“You—”

“You’ve had this ridiculous savior complex for as long as I’ve known you,” Alisse says. “And as soon as you graduate, what does your dad do but come along and drop the perfect world-saving career-path right into your lap—”

“I just don’t know if law is really—”

“And you decided you wanted to go your own way, to get your feet on the ground and your hands in the dirt and I _respect_ that. But you don’t get to throw away a perfect plan for a perfect life and then complain that the real world is _scary_ or _uncertain_ or _complicated_.”

Sarah stares at her friend, flabbergasted. Part of her sort of wants to apologize, and another, much more vocal part of her wants to tell Alisse to go fuck herself, but mostly she’s just wondering where this is coming from.

Alisse sighs and hunches her shoulders.

“Look, so you’ll go off into the world and do great things and be the big fucking hero like you’ve always wanted. And maybe this thing you’ve been wanting for months will be the first step on your incredible journey, and the scales will fall from your eyes and your path will be clear and all that bullshit. And maybe it won’t and you’ll have to figure out something else. But either way, you’ll _know_. So stop freaking out and just…just _do_ it. Just _move_.” She looks away. “Not everyone can.”

…and there it is.

As Alisse falls silent, Sarah is suddenly conscious of a gulf between the two of them—a gulf that has nothing to do with differences in musical tastes or sexual orientation or semi-repressed supernatural secrets and everything to do with the fact that Alisse is working almost thirty hours a week to put herself through community college, while Sarah graduated debt free—everything to do with Thanksgiving with her father and Toby and Irene, and Christmas at her Nana’s, and even New Year’s with her mother and Jeremy, because as unsatisfactory a parent as Linda is in many ways, she’s never once forgotten to call on her daughter’s birthday.

Alisse and her mother haven’t spoken in three years.

What’s more, Sarah realizes with a flush of shame, Alisse is right. Sarah _knows_ she is, and yet here she is, 23 years old and still expecting her life to work like a goddamn fairy tale. Which—she fights down the familiar surge of pain, and the more-familiar frustration that follows it—which it _isn’t_. At least, not anymore. She made that choice years ago. (She grits her teeth against the tug of memory. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.)

It’s time and past time for her to put away her childish things—time and past time to stop dreaming and _live_.

She takes a breath.

“Okay,” she says.

Alisse turns to look at her, something raw and vulnerable lurking behind her eyes. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Sarah repeats, more firmly. “You’re right. It’s what I’ve wanted and…and it’ll be what it’ll be and I just need to get over myself and get moving.” She takes another breath. “Any minute now.”

Alisse laughs, a little shakily. “Hey, baby steps, you know? Tell you what: let’s go out tonight and celebrate properly. We’ll bring Ernie—you can even invite that girlfriend of his.”

In spite of herself, Sarah’s lips twitch. “Generous of you.”

“Isn’t it?” Alisse stands up, stretching. “Anyway, I’ve got class soon, so I need to grab my clothes and _you_ need to fuck off so I can shower. But we’ll meet up later?”

“Sure,” Sarah says, getting to her feet as well. Then, feeling something more is expected of her: “Monty’s at eight?”

Alisse bites her lip. “I was hoping I could talk someone into getting dinner with me.”

“This the girl in your chem class?”

“Farhiya? Yeah. I’m pretty sure she’s straight, but…” Alisse shrugs. “Nothing ventured, you know? Call Ernie and tell him eight, and I’ll be there when I can. Probably nine—nine-thirty at the latest.”

“Sure thing.”

“In the meantime…” Alisse hesitates. “Try not to do that broody thing you do. This is _objectively_ good news.”

“Right,” Sarah says. “Sure. You go to class, and I’ll… practice being excited. Not broody.”

She widens her eyes and raises her eyebrows, pulling her lips back in a manic grin.

“See?” she asks, pointing at her face. “Excited!”

Alisse shakes her head, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Fucking pathetic,” she sighs, patting Sarah on the shoulder on her way out.

* * *

“Sorry I’m late,” Sarah says, sliding into the corner booth at half-past eight. Ernie and Nina are already there, and judging by the number of empty cups on the table, already on their second drinks. “I couldn’t find my keys, and then there was some sort of accident on Mass Ave. Everything was backed up for _blocks_.”

“I thought I heard sirens,” Ernie remarks. “What happened?”

“Not a clue.”

“Boston drivers,” says Nina disgustedly.

“Oh, and New York drivers are so much better?” Ernie asks, nudging her in the ribs.

“New Yorkers,” Nina corrects, flipping a long strand of cherry red hair over her shoulder, “don’t _drive_.”

Ernie rolls his eyes at Sarah, but he’s smiling.

“We already drank your _and_ Alisse’s drinks,” he tells her. “Sorry.”

“That’s fine, I’ll grab something from the bar.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nina tells her. “This is your night! Ernie?”

“Just something for me, for now,” Sarah says. “Alisse probably won’t be here for at least another half hour.”

“Gotcha,” says Ernie, heading off for the bar.

“Where is Alice anyway?” Nina asks, lips pursing slightly.

Sarah sighs. “It’s _Alisse_. Like when you don’t want to buy a car, you get a lea— You know what? I’m not going to get into this now.”

Nina and Alisse are engaged in a war of personalities. At this stage, it’s mostly a war of attrition—the two avoid direct conflict in favor of laying waste to everything surrounding them, most notably Sarah’s sanity. She’s tried confronting Alisse over it.

“She’s _crunchy_ ,” Alisse had sniffed. “Hippy drippy. _You_ know,” and refused to explain further, as if crunchiness were a self-evident ground for open warfare.

To be fair, to Alisse, it probably is.

Not, Sarah reflects, that crunchy is _exactly_ the right word. Nina bears the general appearance of a punk-rocker who was accidentally transported to the Summer of Love—waist-length red hair, lip-piercing, and all. She’s currently wearing a baggy tie-die t-shirt over ripped fishnets and a denim mini-skirt. It is, Sarah supposes, a _look_.

But it’s not just Nina’s fashion sense that offends Alisse. It’s the pack of battered tarot cards she carries in her shoulder bag, the open and uncritical way she relates the story of a friend of a friend who’d “felt a presence” in a Cape May B&B.

“They’re nothing to be scared of, you know, ghosts,” she’d said kindly, mistaking Alisse’s expression of open-mouthed disgust. “Just lost spirits, trapped between the worlds. Sad, really.”

Alisse, who is as serious about her atheism as only someone raised by a deeply religious, authoritarian parent could be, tends to take that kind of thing _personally_.

“And when I asked her what the evidence was,” she’d fumed, “she quoted fucking Shakespeare at me. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, _Alice_.’ Miss Fancy-Pants grad student. Fuck her and her patronizing New Age bullshit.”

“Sorry,” Nina says now, not looking it. “Let’s talk about you. The Peace Corps, that’s incredible! I always figured you for the sort to change the world.”

“Oh, well.” Sarah turns up the corners of her lips in something approximating a smile. “I don’t know about ‘changing the world.’ I don’t even know where I’m going yet, or what I’ll be doing when I get there.”

“Well, whatever it is,” Nina says with breezy confidence, “I’m sure you’ll be amazing at it.”

“Um,” says Sarah, “thanks.”

“ _Although_ ,” Nina adds, a terrible gleam of interest entering her eyes, “with a big transition like that, you’re probably feeling pretty nervous…” She trails off invitingly.

Sarah tries not to wince. Whatever it is that Nina studies—she’s surprisingly hard to pin down on the topic—it apparently involves a lot of Freudian theory. She _likes_ Nina—patronizing New Age bullshit and all—but it had been hard enough subjecting herself to Alisse’s blunt, take-no-prisoners style of moral support. Being psychoanalyzed by an over-eager grad student in the middle of a crowded bar sounds like a scene from Sarah’s own personal hell.

“Yeah, uh, maybe.” She glances over Nina’s shoulder. “Oh look,” she says, with thinly disguised relief. “Here comes Ernie with the drinks!”

* * *

An hour and a half later, Sarah is nursing her drink in the corner while Nina and Ernie engage in a heated debate about some French philosopher Sarah has never heard of. At least, she thinks it’s a debate. She hasn’t ruled out the possibility that this is just how they flirt.

She glances up to see them looking at her expectantly.

“Sorry, what?”

Ernie shoots Nina a wry glance. “Sorry, you must be bored out of your mind.”

“No, it’s really interesting,” Sarah lies.

Nina leans forward. “We were just wondering where Twiggy—”

“Come on,” says Ernie, “don’t call her that.”

“Fine. Where _Alisse_ has got to.”

Sarah trails a finger around the rim of her glass. “I think she’s on an… impromptu… date... thing?”

“A date!” Ernie’s face clears.

“She said she’d be here an hour ago, though.”

“Must be going really well then!”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “maybe.”

He looks at her keenly. “You know it’s probably nothing, right? Like, there are a million reasons she could be late, and almost none of them involve her lying dead in a ditch.”

“I know,” says Sarah, and she _does_ know, only…

“Sarah,” Nina says in sudden horror. “Are you still on your _first drink_?”

“I…yes?”

She shoves herself decisively to her feet. “Well, we’d better do something to fix that.”

“I don’t know…”

“We’re supposed to be _celebrating_ ,” Nina says emphatically. “One drink isn’t celebrating. One drink is barely _breakfast_.”

“There’s no time to lose,” Ernie adds. “Alisse could walk through the door _any minute_ , and if she finds out you’ve been worrying about her rather than getting drunk, well…” He shakes his head, looking grave. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, Williams.”

This is pretty a fair point, but one with an obvious rebuttal.

“And if she finds out you’ve been droning on about philosophy instead of _getting_ me drunk, you will be.”

Ernie clutches his chest. “Touché! Well, only one thing to do. We’ll just have to get you wasted as quickly as possible, Nina and I will shut up about Foucault, and Alisse need never know a thing.”

“No more Foucault?” Sarah feels a smile begin to spread across her face. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

* * *

…and a few hours after _that_ , Sarah staggers into the darkened hall of her apartment.

“Hello?” she calls.

The light is off in the kitchen, the living room, and the bathroom. Sarah bangs on Alisse’s bedroom door.

“Hey. Hey! Alisse!”

No response.

“All right, you asked for it!” Sarah says, flinging an arm over her eyes. “Make yourself decent: I’m coming in!”

Fumblingly, she opens the door.

The room is empty.

Sarah blows out a noisy breath and stumbles back to her own bedroom.

Apparently, Alisse’s crush _hadn’t_ been straight after all.

Sarah flops onto her bed, feeling strangely desolate.

It’s not that she’s _jealous_ , exactly. She wants Alisse to be happy. Therefore, if this girl makes Alisse happy, that’s what she wants. Simple logic. And really, what better time for Alisse to find someone then when Sarah is about to head off to god-knows-where to do god-knows-what for the next two years?

Only…

She’s seen the way Ernie looks at Nina sometimes, like she’s the only person in the room. She pictures Alisse wearing that same expression, gazing at some faceless girl with her eyes tender and bright and once again, Sarah feels a gulf, a yawning distance stretching between them.

She knows how it’s supposed to feel. She’s seen the movies, read the books, heard the gushing from her friends. That sense of infatuation, of being so caught up in another person that you begin to lose yourself in them, begin to feel like another person entirely, clumsy and foolish and giddy and light. And sometimes—in the rarest, best of cases—you find someone who makes you _more_ of yourself, a better, fuller you.

She wonders how it must feel, to burn that brightly for someone.

She’s had glimpses of it, that fullness, that super-saturation, that more-than-self. There are a few people in the world who have made her feel… _something_ like that. Toby. Irene, once or twice. Ernie, sometimes. Alisse, more often than anyone.

(And there had been others too, hadn’t there, another world and half a lifetime away—

_No_.

Not now, not even drunk as she is. Some things should stay buried.)

And she’s had crushes, or at least, she thinks she has—what else to call that intrigue, that slight but steady pull of attraction and curiosity? But none of the men she’s ever been with—dates, hook-ups, the occasional one-night-stand, even a few short-lived boyfriends—have ever made her feel more or less… _Sarah_ than she does already. Which is _fine_ , surely. Surely she should already be _enough_.

And yet…

Funny how alcohol can take you from anxious, to cheerful, to maudlin, just like that.

She blinks twice, sniffs, and presses her face more firmly into the pillow.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

* * *

It isn’t until morning, when she hauls herself out of bed at the crack of dawn to get a much needed glass of water, that she spots it: the blinking red light of the answering machine.

She takes a swig, sets down her glass, shuffles over to the answering machine, and presses play.

“You’ve reached the home of Sarah Williams—”

The sound of her own voice, as always, disconcerts her, slightly higher than she expects and overlaid with the faint, grating distortion of low-quality sound recording.

“—and Alisse Rochefort—” Alisse’s voice chimes in.

Impatiently, Sarah presses the skip button.

There’s a click, then a robotic voice recites: “You have _one_ new message.”

Another click, and then another voice, female and professional to the point of tonelessness: “I’m calling on behalf of Massachusetts General Hospital. A Miss Annalisse Rocheford was admitted to our emergency medical unit at 8:37 this evening…”

* * *

“…no longer in immediate danger,” the doctor says, “but her condition remains extremely serious. We’ve relocated her to the ICU for the time being.”

“How long…” _until she wakes up?_ Sarah thinks. She tries to finish the question, but her lips won’t cooperate.

“I’m afraid there’s no way of knowing at this point. We hope to have a clearer prognosis soon. In the meantime, be assured that she is receiving every possible care.”

She nods, limply. “You’ll be wanting her next of kin.”

“You said you were family?”

“Her roommate—” Sarah cuts herself off midsentence, and swallows. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m her family.”

The doctor gives her a sharp look. “Any _other_ living relatives?”

“There’s her mother,” Sarah says. “But they’re estranged.”

“Nevertheless, we’ll need a full name and contact details.”

 “I can call home and find out. Is there a phone I can use?”

“There’s a payphone in the hallway.”

Sarah nods. Then, biting her lip, she asks abruptly, “Was he drunk?”

The doctor glances up from her clipboard. “Who?”

“The guy who hit her. The police … they said he just veered onto the sidewalk—from out of nowhere, they said. He _must’ve_ been— He was, wasn’t he?”

The doctor purses her lips. “I’m not authorized to share that information.”

“They got him, though. Right?”

“The driver in question has been identified by the police and taken in for treatment, yes.”

Sarah nods once, sharply.

“Good.”

Out in the hallway, Sarah slots her quarters into the payphone and dials home. Irene picks up on the third ring.

Sarah begins to speak. The words are brief, clinical—a doctor’s words, not her own. “Severe cranial trauma,” she says, and “deep coma,” and “prognosis uncertain.”

She had thought nothing in the world could hurt so much as the sight of Alisse, face livid with bruises, stark against the white linen of the hospital bed as she lay there like some ghastly sci-fi Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by blinking lights and inscrutable machinery. But hearing Irene’s hissing intake of breath and that awful, weighty sympathy enter her voice—

In fifth grade, Sarah did a book report on the Salem witch trials. It was there that she first heard of Giles Corey, who was accused of witchcraft and refused to enter a plea. They’d laid him flat beneath a wooden board and piled boulders on his chest and stomach. It had taken him two days to die; his last words had been a plea for “more weight,” so the stones might kill him faster.

Now, for the very first time, she thinks she might have some inkling of how he must have felt as he lay gasping under all that weight, wanting nothing but to break and _break_ until there was nothing left of him to feel.

But she can’t break. Not now. Not when there’s still something—anything left for her to do.

“I’m coping,” she says into the receiver. “No. No, it’s fine. Please don’t come. Look, I’ll call you later, but I really need that number…”

She scrawls Mrs. Rochefort’s contact information on a crumpled napkin fished out from the depths of her jacket pocket.

“Okay, thanks. I’d better go give this to the doctor now. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Just know that you have all our love,” Irene says at the other end of the line. “Your father’s, Toby’s… and mine.”

A sudden lump rises in Sarah’s throat. It’s the first time Irene has ever said it, in so many words. She knows what she should say, but—

“Thanks,” she says instead, and hangs up the phone.

She stands there for a moment, eyes closed, willing the world to change around her, to be anything other than it is. But it hadn’t worked when she was fourteen, and it doesn’t work now.

Finally, she opens her eyes again, puts a few more coins into the machine, and dials Ernie’s number.

* * *

Ernie arrives a few hours later. Sarah is sitting in a chair by Alisse’s bed.

“Hey,” he says, softly.

“Hey,” she says, not meeting his eyes. “I’ll just—just leave you to…”

She trails off with a grimace, rises, and, still avoiding his gaze, leaves the room.

She’s sitting in the waiting room when he emerges twenty minutes later, bent and pale and exhausted. He catches sight of her, and gives her the barest ghost of a smile which flickers and dies as he gets a better look at her face.

“Jesus, Williams, you look like death—”                                                                                          

He breaks off, stricken, and somehow Sarah can’t resist rubbing it in.

“ _I’m_ not the one who looks like death.”

The shaft goes awry. Ernie is looking at her with an awful sympathy that borders on pity. Sarah shrinks in on herself, feeling petty and mean and vile and painfully unheroic.

“You’re not the only one, sure.” He sits down next to her. “I mean, I know Alisse was the leader of your terrible twosome, but do you have to follow _everywhere_ she goes?”

He holds her gaze for a moment, and Sarah feels her face crumple.

“Aw, Jeez.” Ernie’s arm comes awkwardly around her shoulders and drags her face into his chest. She snuffles into the flannel of his shirt. After a moment, his hand comes down and gently strokes her head. She starts to pull away.

“What’s the matter, am I not a good enough handkerchief for you?”

Sarah makes an inarticulate sound.

“Come on, you’ve already ruined this shirt. Might as well finish the job.”

“Won’t Nina mind?” Sarah manages, voice muffled.

She can feel the rumble of his laughter. “Nah, she likes you. God knows why. She’s teaching, but she’ll be by later.”

Another few moments of silence, then his belly grumbles loudly.

He laughs again, self-consciously. “Came as soon as I got your message. Guess I forgot lunch. What about you?”

A pause.

“Williams?” He grasps her by the shoulders and gently pries her away from his chest, looking into her face. “When’s the last time you ate?”

She stares at him blankly.

“Right. Let’s get some lunch then.”

Sarah shakes her head. “You go. I can’t— I have to—”

“What are you going to do for her that an entire hospital full of doctors and nurses can’t manage?”

She sets her jaw.

“All right, let me rephrase. What are you going to do for that an entire hospital full of doctors and nurses can’t manage _when you’re passed out in a hospital bed of your own due to malnutrition_?”

She opens her mouth to an embarrassing lack of rebuttals.

He shakes his head. “You’re no match for me like this, Williams. Let’s get you fed so you can argue with me properly, okay?”

In the cafeteria, it’s Ernie who loads up her tray and Ernie who pays for both their lunches and Ernie who bullies, badgers, and cajoles her into eating. When she’s swallowed enough to satisfy him, he walks her back to the ICU and leaves her there to sit and pace, pace and sit until the long shadows stretch across the ward and the nurses come to send her home.

* * *

Three days later, Sarah walks into Alisse’s hospital room to find it already occupied. This in itself isn’t a surprise—the nurse had told her that Alisse already had a visitor. Sarah had expected Ernie, or maybe one of Alisse’s classmates. What she hadn’t expected—what she should’ve _known_ to expect—is a middle-aged woman in a shapeless green sweater and a pair of sensible brown loafers.

The woman turns towards the door, and Sarah experiences a brief moment of double vision. The visitor looks like an Alisse who has been left in the sun too long, all tanned, leathery-looking skin and brittle grey hair. It’s easy to see where Alisse got her slender build from, the stubbornness in her chin and the curl in her hair. Not the brightness in her eyes, though, or the incandescence of her smile. Not the things that _matter_.

But Alisse’s light is dimmed now, her eyes closed, her smile given place to the blank, expressionless mask worn only by the sleeping or the dead. In this moment, the resemblance between mother and daughter has never been stronger.

“Sarah,” Mrs. Rochefort says, inclining her head.

Sarah says nothing. Looking closely, she can see the marks of strain, the pouches under the eyes, the grey curls limp and matted to the head. Tendrils of anger begin to unfurl inside her. How easily the doctors and the nurses must’ve been taken in, led astray by these small signs. How dare she come here, wearing that thin veneer of pain, playing the part of a grieving mother as if she had any right to the role—to the _feeling_.

_Imposter_.

Words are bubbling up inside her. She can almost taste them, sharp and bitter on her tongue. _Liar. Bigot. How dare you come here, you traitor, you fake. You have no right—_

Except that that isn’t true. Legally speaking, Alisse’s mother has every right. It’s Sarah who has none.

Her fingers clench.

She should leave, that’s what she should do. Turn around and walk away, rather than stand here choking on her rage and her helplessness as the pressure of accusations and recriminations builds in her throat. But what if Mrs. Rochefort found the snub insulting enough to ban her from visiting? Sarah tries to think back to high school, to remember if she’d shown signs of that sort of vindictiveness. But surely a woman who would disown her only daughter for being gay is capable of _anything_?

It’s Mrs. Rochefort who breaks the silence.

“I was just going for dinner,” she says, standing. “I should be out for about two hours. Please excuse me.”

With that, she sweeps past Sarah and is gone.

Sarah looks at the clock on the wall. 4:37 pm.

For some reason, that’s what breaks her. After everything, to be beholden to Alisse’s mother—to be the recipient of her _kindness_ —of her _graciousness_. Unbearable. _Unbearable_.

Even worse is the knowledge that it’s Sarah’s own fault that Mrs. Rochefort is even in a position to be gracious. If she hadn’t been so damn eager to _help_ —if she’d only _thought_ for a moment—the doctors need never have known that Alisse had any living relatives, and Mrs. Rochefort wouldn’t be here right now, taking control of her daughter’s life just as if the past three years—years of poverty, of struggle, of abandonment, of _freedom_ —hadn’t happened.

She sinks into a chair by the bedside, cradling her head in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she tells Alisse as the tears begin to flow. “Christ. _Christ_. I’m so fucking sorry.”

* * *

It’s Ernie who hears first. Sarah is at work when she gets the call.

“There’s been some news. It’s not urgent, exactly, but you should get over here as soon as you can. It’s…it’s bad, Sarah,” he says, voice cracking slightly. “It’s really, really bad.”

“On my way,” she says, and hangs up the phone.

Grabbing her coat and bag, she stops by the receptionist’s desk.

“I need to go. Family emergency. Tell Stephen, will you?”

The receptionist blinks at her. “Mr. McCormick should be out of his meeting in ten minutes. Couldn’t you—”

Whatever she reads in Sarah’s face stops her short.

“Go ahead,” she says. “I’ll tell him.”

Ernie meets her in the lobby. He grabs her by the elbow and tows her to the side.

“What’s happened?” Sarah’s voice is low, urgent.

“I saw, um… I saw Mrs. Rochefort. On my way to visit Alisse. She said…” He swallows. “She told me I should make my goodbyes.”

And just like that, Sarah is drowning.

She hears Ernie’s voice, distant and hollow, as though from a long way away. “There’s been some kind of … complication. She—Alisse has a week. Maybe less. She said I should tell you.”

Sarah struggles to focus through the rushing in her ears. “A complication?” Her mind—her mind is _too slow_ , water-logged. She has to _think_. “What do you mean, a _complication_?”

“I don’t know, that’s all she said. I think—hang on, where are you going?”

* * *

“You should really speak to Dr. Ruiz,” the nurse says, glancing skittishly down the hallway. “She’s in a conference at the moment, but—”

“Please.” Sarah’s voice is low and husky. “I need to know.” To her horror, she feels tears begin to prickle at her eyes. Angrily, she raises a hand and dashes them away. “ _Please_ ,” she says again.

The nurse glances around again, and sighs.

“Miss Rochefort has developed a post-traumatic intracerebral hematoma. A blood vessel has ruptured in her brain and the accumulated blood has begun to put pressure—”

“I know what an intracerebral hematoma is,” Sarah snaps. She takes a deep, unsteady breath, trying to regulate her tone. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Without treatment? Fatal, likely within the week.”

A week. Sarah presses a trembling hand to her temple. This is nothing she didn’t know already, she reminds herself, fighting off an encroaching swell of dizziness.

“And the treatment options?”

“An emergency craniotomy might relieve the pressure, but I’m afraid due to Miss Rochefort’s prior injuries and the location of the hematoma, surgical intervention is extremely risky.”

Sarah takes a deep breath and lowers her hand. So there _is_ a treatment.

“How risky?”

 The nurse looks uncomfortable. “I’m not— You should really talk to the surgeon about—”

“ _Please_. Just your estimate, if you can’t give me anything else.”

“Miss Rochefort has a one in four chance of surviving without severe and irreversible brain damage.”

_One in four_.

Sarah shuts her eyes.

“And what about with—with damage?”

“One in three. I’m afraid at this stage any further trauma is likely to prove fatal. If you should choose to proceed—”

“ _If_? What do you mean, _if_?”

A horrible suspicion begins to creep into Sarah’s mind. It had sounded so final, what Ernie told her. So hopeless. So _definite_.

But no. It couldn’t be true. Surely no parent could—

But the nurse is speaking again.

“Given the risks involved, families do sometimes elect to avoid the surgery.” She frowns. “It was my understanding that in Miss Rochefort’s case—”

“Trina? What’s going on here?”

A middle-aged nurse rounds the corner behind them, her voice sharp, eyes bright with suspicion.

Trina relaxes in evident relief. “This young woman had a few questions about her sister’s condition. Do you know if Dr. Ruiz—”

“Who’s her sister?” the older woman interrupts.

“Annalisse Rochefort, in Room 220.”

The older woman’s eyes narrow.

“Annalisse Rochefort doesn’t _have_ a—”

Sarah doesn’t wait to hear the rest.

* * *

Two minutes later she’s yanking open the door to Alisse’s hospital room.

Mrs. Rochefort is sitting in a chair by the bed. She looks up sharply as Sarah enters. Then her face relaxes in recognition, her shoulders slumping slightly.

“Sarah.”

The older nurse comes hurrying in behind Sarah.

“What do you think you’re doing, barging in like that? Come with me at once, before I call security to escort you out!” She turns to Mrs. Rochefort. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry for the intrusion.”

Mrs. Rochefort shakes her head. “No, no, it’s all right. Sarah’s a …friend of the family.”

“Ma’am, hospital protocol—”

“She’s here at my request,” Mrs. Rochefort says, firmly. Then, more softly. “Please. There’s not much time left.”

The nurse glances from Sarah to Mrs. Rochefort, lips tight. Then she shoots Sarah a warning glare and walks out.

“Please,” Mrs. Rochefort says, indicating the free chair on the other side of the bed. “Have a seat.”

Sarah remains standing.

They stay like that for a long moment. There are so many things Sarah wants to say— _needs_ to say, but she doesn’t know how to begin. This isn’t how she’d imagined things. She’d swept in here on a tide of righteous anger, but Mrs. Rochefort isn’t playing along. _Again_.

Mrs. Rochefort speaks first.

“You’ve been a good friend to my Annalisse.” She sighs. “I remember when we first moved to Robbinsville. It was so hard on her, with her father gone…” She shakes her head. “But she was so happy to find a friend. I was happy too.” One of the corners of her mouth twitches upwards in a wry half-smile.  “She was so _wild_ , you see, even then. Wayward and unruly. And you were so _good_ , so quiet and polite. I’d hoped you might be a good influence on her.” She sighs again. “But it was always the other way around with you two, wasn’t it? Were you ever—”

She stops, and Sarah knows she’d been about to ask if they were lovers.

“I don’t suppose it matters now,” Mrs. Rochefort says, as if to herself.

She looks at Sarah, standing there with her jaw jutted forward, practically vibrating with all the words yet to be spoken, and folds her hands in her lap. “Well. Say what you’ve come to say.”

“The surgery,” she says, and practically has to bite her tongue to stop everything else from spilling out, all of the arguments and recriminations and threats and pleas.

Mrs. Rochefort shuts her eyes briefly. “Ah, yes. I suppose you asked one of the nurses?”

“She said—she said it was the only way, but from what Ernie told me… About saying goodbyes. It sounded so _final_ …” She trails off.

Mrs. Rochefort says nothing.

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me it’s not what I think.”

Mrs. Rochefort bows her head. “I have prayed for guidance. One in three survival rate—did the nurse tell you that?”

Sarah nods jerkily.

“I thought she might have. One in three… No. Better for her to pass here, peacefully in her bed, than to die on the operating table, surrounded by strangers, cut open and bloody like a—a pagan sacrifice.”

“That doesn’t make _sense_ ,” Sarah bursts out. “One in three—that means she might _live_. It might _save her life_.”

“Annalisse is in God’s hands.”

“She’s in _your_ hands,” Sarah snarls. “Her fucking _life_ is in your hands, and you’re choosing to _let her die_.”

Mrs. Rochefort closes her eyes, absorbing the blow.

“Have you told the doctors yet?” Sarah asks hoarsely.

“I’m afraid I don’t see how that’s your concern,” Mrs. Rochefort said, a hint of coolness entering her voice.

“ _Have you_?”

“I’ve made up my mind. I won’t change it, and you’ll only distress us both if you try.”

“How can you— How can you _say_ that? Your daughter’s life is on the line and you won’t even _consider_ trying to save her?”

Mrs. Rochefort looks down at her clasped hands. “I don’t expect you to understand.” She gets to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with Dr. Ruiz. I’ll leave you alone to say your goodbyes.”

She makes for the door but Sarah steps in front of her, blocking her path.

“She was never what you wanted,” Sarah says, her chest heaving. She can feel the rage burning inside her, and she doesn’t understand why it feels so _dirty_ —surely fire should be _clean_. “You’re probably happy to get rid of her.”

Mrs. Rochefort draws herself up tight. “She is my _daughter_.” The corners of her mouth are pinched, but her eyes are as bright as Sarah had ever seen them. “I pray you’re never given a trial such as this.”

“Sure,” Sarah spits. “Pray. So much easier than actually trying to fix things. And then when it gets too hard, you can opt out with a clean conscience. What does it matter if your daughter is dead? At least you _prayed_ first.”

Mrs. Rochefort stands stock still, her mouth working.

“The Lord forgive you, Sarah Williams,” she says finally.

Then she’s leaving, and Alisse is still lying there so pale and unresponsive, and the clock is ticking on the wall and Sarah is running out of time _again_. She would do _anything_ for more time. For more time she had once smashed her way out of a crystal ballroom—shattered her own dreams, and now—

It’s so easy, so terribly, appallingly _easy_. That’s what she remembers, later.  How it took so much less than a conscious effort to make the decision—how it was like relaxing a muscle she’d held clenched inside her for years without ever noticing it. All she has to do is _let go_ and the words spill out of her, and for one, awful moment, all she feels is the sweetness of release.

“Mrs. Rochefort!”

Alisse’s mother turns around one last time, and there’s nothing on her face but a heavy, bone-deep weariness. Sarah can see she’s tired of fighting. It’s easier to hate her for that than for anything else.

“I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now.”

For a moment, Mrs. Rochefort just stares at her through pale, protuberant eyes—and Sarah notices for the first time how _worn_ they look, how red the rims are and how dark the shadows beneath the lower lids.

Then—she must have blinked. Because Mrs. Rochefort is gone and at her back there’s the terrible, uncanny feeling of presence, and a voice whose purr makes her stomach churn, raises the hairs on the back of her neck, and sets her nerves to sparking with fear and shameful, sickening excitement.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuckin’ Massholes. Ya’ll East Coasters know what I’m talking about.
> 
> Earlier drafts had Sarah as a far more innocent victim—wishing away a stalker who was in the process of attacking Alisse, or something equally morally uncompromising—but then it was like, why would I do that when I could have her carpet bomb her own moral high ground? NOBODY HAS CLEAN HANDS IN THIS STORY FOLKS.
> 
> FYI, crainiotomies are actually extremely safe as far as brain surgery goes (according to the interwebs). Just in case you need one someday, and all you remember is “I read somewhere they’re unsafe.” WELL THEY’RE NOT IT WAS A FICTION LIE GET THE SURGERY THAT’S THE MORAL OF THIS FUCKING CHAPTER.
> 
> Soundtrack:  
> “Five Years,” by David Bowie.  
> “Civilian,” by Wye Oak. (THIS SONG YOU GUYZ)  
> “I Need My Girl,” by The National. (ALSO THIS ONE)  
> “Something Must Break,” by Joy Division.
> 
> (You should also feel free to listen to some Bon Jovi if you want. Go ahead, I’m giving you permission. No shame: everybody loves a bit of Bon Jovi. Especially Sarah. It’s the hair—she’s just got a thing for that oh-so-shaggy, oh-so-shaggable rock star mop. If blond mullets were more in fashion among the young men of the 90s, our story might be a different one, but they weren’t and it isn’t and I think we’re all the better for it.)
> 
> All my thanks and appreciation to Exulansis, mine321, nevar_walc, Maplesyrup, Araminta1993, allthegoodnamesaretakendammit, Jess, dashalle, mewcowardlylion, Captain_Boo_Bear, Operamuse, Kayla, and paisleycats for reviewing! Such motivation, really! Ya’ll are just the best.
> 
> Next chapter ("Bring Me My Devil") ends Part 1 and it’s another whopper. In the meantime, I’m kind of dying to know what you think, especially about the end of the chapter. Didja love it? Didja hate it?


	8. Bring Me My Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-ed by the many-talented syntheticaesthetic, patron saint of exhausted, hopelessly abstruse, and writer's-blocked authors. Or, at least, of this one.

**Chapter 8**

**Bring Me My Devil**

* * *

" _Oh my lord, here's a just reward:  
bring me my devil just behind the door."_

"The Kingdom of the Universe," Ashley Park.

* * *

_And a hundred thousand times a day,_  
_The yellow lights turn red._  
_And a hundred thousand miles away,_  
_I'm turning myself in—_  
_Oh Christ, I am._

"A Children's Crusade on Acid," Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos.

* * *

Slowly, she turns around. There's a gentle rushing in her ears, like sand falling through an hour glass. Something ephemeral—something _precious_ —is slipping away from her. She can almost feel the breeze of its passage. Convulsively, her hands seize as if hoping to catch it and arrest its flight, but it's too late. Whatever it is has gone and her hands grasp only air.

Twelve words. Nothing in the world should be that simple. Even as she'd spoken them, despite everything, some part of her hadn't really believed it would work.

Yet here he is, resplendent in his most imposing Goblin King finery: a rippling cloak and beetle-black armor polished to an oil-spill sheen. He should look absurd standing there, a dream creature transposed into the bright, clinical cheerfulness of the ICU, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the open window behind him. Yet somehow, he's the realest thing in the room—it's everything else that feels like the dream.

Inside her, a little voice begins to whisper its horror and its anticipation, its wonder and its pride and its absolute, damning censure. _I did this. I did this. Me, me, me_.

Sarah squeezes her hands even tighter, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. The pain is an anchor.

_Focus_.

He puts his head to one side and grins.

" _Sarah_. It's been an age."

"Five years," she says evenly, hoping to hell that the thundering of her heart isn't as audible to him as it is to her.

"Five years!" He shakes his head. "How time does fly. Although I must say, I much preferred the venue of our last encounter. For one thing, the floorshow was far superior." He waves a casual hand at Alisse's prone figure, at the whole unlovely array of monitors and IVs and medical apparatus.

Sarah gives a little gasp at the callousness of it. Even for him…

Brushing past her, he crosses the room in a few, easy strides and yanks open the door. He thrusts his head out into the hallway, humming his disapproval. "Yes, I can't say I think much of this as the setting for a long-awaited reunion."

Belatedly, she starts forward. "Get away from there! What if someone sees?"

He ducks back inside the room. "So cautious, Sarah! No one will see. I've stopped time."

She jerks back. "You can't have! You have no—"

"Oh, _Sarah_." He smiles fondly at her. "You asked a boon of me; I granted it. That gives me all _manner_ of power."

_Stay calm_ , instructs the rational part of herself, the part that guided her through many a medical emergency in her years as an EMT. _Hold your ground._ _Think_.

Whatever powers her wish may have given him, they clearly didn't include the power to snatch her off, or steal her soul, or claim her death, or whatever it is he wants with her.

Unless, of course, he's just toying with her.

She wouldn't put it past him, especially since his demeanor is so…strange. For all his forbidding attire, the Goblin King is positively buoyant. She's never seen him in such good spirits, and the sight sets alarm bells ringing in her head.

He flashes her a boyish grin. "You're looking…not _well_ , exactly. A bit hag-ridden, if truth be told. But certainly better than your friend here." He clucks his tongue. "Poor girl. She used to be such a pretty thing, too."

Sarah stands frozen for a moment. To think, she'd always thought rage was _hot_.

"How dare you," she says, when she finally manages to speak. "How _dare_ you."

"Oh, quite easily," he assures her, eyes crinkling in amusement. "And—" as if the thought has suddenly occurred to him "—with a good deal of _style._ "

Something inside her snaps, and she lunges for him. She wants to shake the smile from his face and the laughter from his eyes, shake him until the teeth rattle in his head and his stupid, freakish eyes roll from their sockets, until he's boneless and broken and bleeding on the floor, begging her for mercy—until he feels some tiny fraction of the rage and pain and fear and _helplessness_ that fill her. It won't be enough—it won't be anywhere _near_ enough. But it'll be a damn good start.

He sidesteps her nimbly, and she stumbles against one of the visitor's chairs, missing one of the life-support machines by bare inches. She braces herself against the chair, biting down on her fist in horror. If she'd hit it—if she'd somehow _damaged_ it…

She's trembling. For the first time in her life, she is a stranger to herself. This isn't her, this blind rage, this savagery. It _can't_ be her.

Regulating her breathing with an effort, she lowers the hand from her mouth, and straightening, turns once more to face him.

Jareth is laughing.

"Pax, Sarah, pax! Let us see first to the matter at hand before we seek to amuse ourselves. You asked that the woman Claudine Rochefort be taken away." He spreads his hands with a magician's flourish. "I have done as you asked."

"I didn't mean—"

Sarah cuts herself off, shutting her eyes against a sudden wave of weariness. The protest was no more than a reflex. She _had_ meant it, and, unlike with Toby all those years before, meant it in the full knowledge of what such a wish entailed.

" _You take people's souls to pay this Tithe," she'd said and—_

— _his skin like fire in a darkened ballroom—_

—" _You could always wish me away a replacement," he'd said—_

— _the press and murmur of the crowd: "Tithe, tithe"—_

—" _A mortal soul is a valuable thing, but a living human? For the sacrifice of one living human, you would spare a thousand souls"—_

— _before her, a staircase stretching to the stars—_

—" _No one should have that kind of responsibility," she'd protested, and turned her face away—_

— _and above her, a silver sickle flashed in the hungry darkness._

She'd known it and still she'd spoken the words. She isn't even sure she wouldn't do it again. Not if there was the smallest chance it could help Alisse. And possibly—with a sudden resurgence of that savagery, she thinks back to the screaming rows all through high school, to Alisse turning up on her doorstep with a suitcase and an agonizing vulnerability in her eyes, to the exhaustion in Mrs. Rochefort's face and the calm acceptance in her voice as she told Sarah Alisse's life was in God's hands—possibly even if there wasn't.

_What am I?_ she wonders sickly, staring into her hands. _God,_ _god_ _, what am I?_

He hikes up an eyebrow. "Didn't you? Perhaps you wish to run the Labyrinth and win her back?"

_Yes!_ some part of her shrieks—the naïve, foolish, grasping-at-straws part, the part that thinks it's still possible to come out of this clean and whole and unbroken. _Take it back! Unsay the words!_

And she _could_ …

But if she beat the Labyrinth again, what then? Mrs. Rochefort would be back and refuse the operation and Alisse would _die_ and it would all be for _nothing_.

Sarah is silent.

"I thought not," says the Goblin King, silkily. He smiles, suddenly cheerful again, and flings himself into a nearby chair. "The woman, then, is mine. Now. To what do I owe the pleasure of this summons?"

"I didn't summon you." She stops, and revises the statement. "I mean, not for anything except to— to _take_ Mrs. Rochefort."

So what if the words are ash in her mouth, as long as Alisse is safe?

"Oh, come now. You wish me, surely, to preserve the life of your friend? Should you wish to strike a bargain, I'm entirely at your disposal, Sarah."

"What?"

She stares at him for a moment, uncomprehending. Then she shakes her head, though she fails to shake away the first prickling of unease.

"No, there's no need. She'll be fine now. The doctors can do the surgery. Her mother—"

"Will make a fine and valuable addition to this period's Tithe and I thank you for the trouble you've spared me in procuring her. But the daughter will die either way."

"No." Sarah takes a step back. "No, no, _no_ ," as if by denying it strongly enough, she can banish the chill certainty that is creeping upon her.

Because it can't be true. It's too _awful_ to be true. To have gone through all that—to have wished Mrs. Rochefort away and refused the chance to win her back, only to find out it _didn't matter…_

"I _saved_ her," she insists.

"I regret to inform you that while it's entirely within your power to do so, which is to say, within _my_ power, your friend is still, at this present moment, marked to die. Within two days, unless I'm very much mistaken." The small smile on his face indicates just how unlikely he considers that possibility.

Two days. Not a week, as the doctors said, but two days. Which means…

…which _means_ Sarah's stupid, desperate spur-of-the-moment plan will actually _work._ Without Mrs. Rochefort to tell them otherwise, the doctors will operate—and Alisse will die on the operating table.

It's so hideously _plausible_ , that's the thing. Compared with the alternative of _certain death_ , a one in three possibility of survival had been so obviously the choice of _life_ , and somehow, in her single-minded battle of life versus death, she'd managed to overlook the fact that one in three is still _really shitty odds_.

_Nothing's certain_ , she reminds herself, shoving down the hopelessness that rises in her like a black tide. _Not yet. All you have so far is his word._

"How do you know?"

"The fate is written on her plain as day to anyone with skill enough to read it." He slides her a sidelong glance. "You could see it too, if only you knew the trick of it. After a few hundred years, you'll be able to read such things almost as well as I. For now…" He lets the words hang in the air for a moment, a tantalizing possibility, before continuing, "…you'll simply have to take my word for it."

"You could be wrong," she says stubbornly.

He could also be lying. He'd said his… _kind_ didn't lie, but what proof was there of that?

Jareth flicks his eyes skyward. "I suppose it's just _barely_ conceivable that after three millennia procuring souls for the Tithe, I could be mistaken. Some powerful magic, perhaps, has clouded my judgment, or the saltwater in the air has, for the first time in the lengthy history of my kind, been sufficient to dampen and deceive my Sight."

He rises from his chair.

"Come. Let's have no more prevarication. You summoned me here to save your friend's life—"

"No," says Sarah, "I—"

"You summoned me to take the woman in the hopes that so doing would be sufficient to save your friend. What does it matter if I'm the direct or indirect cause of her salvation, as long as she's saved?"

"How do you know that's why I wished away Mrs. Rochefort?" she asks, and bites her cheek. It's a stupid question, and they both know it—a silly, childish attempt to challenge his authority, to regain some tiny bit of control over the situation.

"Your friend lies dying in a hospital bed and you wish away her mother and expect me to believe the two are unrelated?" He smiles sharply. There is little trace of his earlier cheerfulness in that smile.

His voice goes soft. "Perhaps you wished the woman away out of the goodness of your heart? A randomly selected sacrifice to help the Underground fulfill its quota? Were you, perhaps, being _generous_ , Sarah?"

He's pacing around her in slow circles now, as if he's scented blood in the water.

Sarah says nothing.

She's searching for the fire—the strength, courage, and conviction—that saw her through their previous encounters. It had been so _easy_ to face him then, when she'd known who she was. _Now_ —

Now she's knowingly and deliberately sacrificed one living person for another, and for what? The chance to barter away her literal soul as well as her metaphorical one? How could you ever come back from something like that?

"No?" he says. "Just a little token to pique my interest, then? Your kind used to leave us offerings, you know, once upon a time, to court our interest and our favor. Blood and wine and the fattest of the herd, and then, as times grew harder and humans, meaner, mere plates of bread and milk and honey. But it's been many a year since I've seen one of your kind sacrifice a living human just to call our attention." He stops just behind her and leans forward, breath hot against her ear. "How nice to see the old ways being kept alive."

"That's not what I me—"

She cuts herself off again. What does it _matter_ what she'd meant? When has it ever mattered? All that matters—all that has ever mattered—is what she _does_. And what she has done _tonight_ …

"No?" She fancies she can feel his smile against her hair. "But surely you must know my interest is already very much… _piqued_."

He traces the contours of her left arm from the shoulder down, gloved fingers hovering a bare inch over the skin—the ghost of a caress.

She goes to slap his hands away and he catches her by the wrists. She twists to face him, struggling to free herself. The self-defense techniques she'd learned in the wake of Kyle's death clearly aren't meant to be used against…whatever the hell it is that he _is_. She'd have better luck bending steel.

"Let go of me," she commands, voice icy.

"Ah, ah, ah," he scolds. "If you do me violence, Sarah, I will be forced to retaliate in kind, something I'm sure both of us will have cause to regret."

He smiles winningly as she tries in vain to break his hold.

"Let me _go_ ," she snarls.

He continues as if she hadn't spoken. "And to offer me violence after I've done nothing but fulfill your wishes and obey your so _obliging_ summons… Well. It's not particularly _honorable_ , is it?"

He releases her, and she stumbles back a few steps. Temper seizes control of her tongue. To _hell_ with him and all his silver-voiced mockery.

"I see nothing dishonorable about using violence against a _monster_."

His face contorts, and for an instant, he looks every inch the monster she'd named him, all flashing eyes and pointed teeth in a bleached-bone complexion. Then—as if a switch has been flipped—he is once again beatific, a fallen angel in glam rock eyeliner.

"I forgive you for that, dearest. We will, after all, have all of eternity to fight and to forgive. Best start as we mean to go on, hm?"

_He thinks he's already won_ , she realizes, sickeningly. _That's why he's been so fucking cheerful. He thinks I've got no choice now but to give him what he wants_. Then—and she'd thought her stomach could sink no lower, but she's been wrong about so many things tonight that it's hardly a surprise that she was wrong about that too—

_He's right_.

She closes her eyes.

"What do I have to give you?" she asks dully. "To save her life?"

His voice is almost tender.

"You know the price."

Her head jerks up. She _does_ know the price, or at least, she knows _a_ price.

"I wished someone away to you. For the Tithe. That was the price you asked for, wasn't it?"

A look of great condescension settles on his face, stilling the sudden fluttering of hope.

"I'm here at _your_ behest," he reminds her. "You asked that the woman be taken; I took her. That this provides a material benefit to me means only that you need owe me no debt for the fulfillment of your wish."

"Then—then I'll wish away someone else!" she says, and bites her tongue. Could she? Could she _really_? But there must be _someone_. Someone cruel, and—and wicked. Someone who _deserves_ it.

There's a queer sort of illness upon her now, a queasy churning in heart and head—a kind of nausea of the soul. _God_ , she thinks again, _what_ _am_ _I?_

"I'm afraid," he says gently, " _that_ offer is no longer on the table."

"Two people," she blurts, and claps a hand over her mouth.

His lips curve in a pitying smile. "You know the price, Sarah."

She knows the price.

"Come now," he says coaxingly. "Would it really be so bad, to pass eternity by my side? Think of the wonders I could show you."

She thinks back to his offer at the castle, all those years ago.

"And you'll be my slave?" she asks, bitterly.

A grin, slow and dark as molasses, spreads across his face. "Perhaps I will at that. For a while, at least. We'll have all of time for exploration, after all, to find out which roles best… _suit_." He pops the 't' on 'suit.' His expression is so lascivious it could be packaged up and sold in adult bookstores.

Sarah shuts her eyes. Not that it does her much good. She has a feeling that smile will be playing a starring role in her nightmares for some time to come. Worse is the squirming bit of warmth south of her navel, the way her toes curl involuntarily at the honey of his tone—her body is in revolt—and she knows that when the nightmares come, the horror won't be that she is unwilling, but that she is _eager_.

She opens her eyes. Jareth is watching her, patiently. Of _course_ he is. He can _afford_ to be patient. He already knows what she's going to say—the only thing she _can_ say. But—

"I can't," she whispers, anguished. She's speaking not to him but to herself now, or maybe to the universe at large—a last, desperate plea, an empty protest against what she knows she has to do—what she _will_ do.

He takes it as a refusal. His face shows astonishment, followed by something else that passes too quickly for her to identify.

"Even now, you won't give me your death? Not even to save the life of your friend? You were more than willing to sacrifice her _mother_." His words are cruel and cutting as ever, but there's something new beneath them—frustration? Something more?

"That was _different_."

He scoffs. "Yes, very different. How unreasonable to ask you to sacrifice _yourself_ , rather than throwing yet another poor wretch to the wolves in your place. If," he adds, mouth twisting, "you can even _call_ it sacrifice. After all, as you once observed, there's no knowing what will happen to the woman when she is Tithed, whereas you will never suffer the same fate. But really, I should've known to expect no less selfishness from you."

Sarah's throat is burning. "Mrs. Rochefort was—was a mistake. A terrible—" Her voice cracks. "—mistake. But to give you my—my—for all eternity—" She's almost pleading with him now. "I don't _trust_ you."

It's a testament to the sheer inadequacy of language that she can think of no stronger word than _trust_ , but something of her horror, the enormity of her revulsion at the idea of _giving herself_ to him, for eternity, or even for a week—for an _hour_ —must have bled into her voice or found expression in her face because—

He gives an exhalation that might in a creature less elegant, less eerily beautiful, be termed a snort, and ducks his head.

"You have no idea how deeply that wounds me."

And Sarah has seen deserts that would look damp next to his tone, but there's something about the set of his shoulders—the way his eyes stray from hers—the clenching and unclenching of his fingers…

It couldn't be…

"I think," she says wonderingly, "I think maybe I do."

He flinches, then flashes her a look of such blazing resentment that it's all she can do to hold her ground, but now she knows what's _behind_ that look…

There's a crawling discomfort on her, but also a strange sort of exhilaration. She'd known he'd wanted her somehow, for _something_ , although she'd assumed it was at best some kind of power play, something to salve his pride and humble hers. At worst…

Well, she's tried not to think about "at worst."

But that she has the power to _hurt_ him, not just through words but through her dislike or disapproval—that he actually _cares_ in some way what she thinks of him—has never occurred to her before. He certainly hasn't gone out of his way to win her over. At least, she doesn't think he has. It's so hard to tell, with him, what is mere natural perversity and what is active malice. Could he even have been wooing her in his own, twisted way? Impossible, surely.

Yet the way he had looked at her, like some wild creature with its leg caught in a trap… There was fury there, yes, but also confusion— _pain_ —and, somewhere beneath all that, buried so deep that she's half certain she'd imagined it, a plea.

_Release me._

Which means she still has chips on the table.

Which means…

Which _means_ …

She's never quite sure afterwards how it happened—one of those strange, impossible flashes of inspiration, the kind you only read about in history books. Because all of a sudden there it is at the back of her mind, born in the space between one heartbeat and the next: the plan, fledgling and weak, but fully-formed and trembling with possibility.

Cautiously, she examines it more closely, learning the shape of it, its curves and its contours. Something begins to thrum within her chest, like an old engine sputtering to life. Her hands have started to shake, and she clasps them together.

Because it's audacious, yes, and risky—more than risky. To put it plainly, it's just about the craziest idea she's ever had, not to mention the most wildly overconfident. Her breath catches on the sheer temerity of it—that she could even _think_ of raising the stakes to such a level…

But surely that's an advantage. He'd never take the bargain if he guessed what she's planning, but even he would never imagine her to be capable of such arrogance—such _insanity_ —as to take the fate of an entire world in her hands. And after all, what has she got to lose? Only her life—or rather, her death. Only _herself_. Nothing, in other words, that isn't already at risk.

But if she can pull it off— If it _works_ … _Oh_ , if it works…

Life. Freedom. A _way out_. Not only for her, but for Alisse, for Mrs. Rochefort, and god knows how many others.

All she has to do is _make the right bargain_.

"Jareth," she says slowly. He jerks his head around to stare at her. Is she imagining the way his nostrils flare, the little shudder that goes through him at the sound of his name on her lips? "I think we might've gotten off on the wrong foot."

He lets out an incredulous laugh, and even through the nerves and the breathless excitement, she feels a sharp pang of pleasure at being the one to discomfit _him_ for once.

"We haven't really met under the best circumstances, you know? I mean, you've got to admit, there hasn't been much about our previous, um, _encounters_ that would let us really get to know—let alone _trust_ —each other."

From the mulish set of his jaw, it's clear he doesn't think himself obliged to admit anything of the sort.

She presses on. "What I'm saying is… You're asking for something really big. You keep talking about—about eternity. About my death—that's my afterlife, right?"

He says nothing, only stares at her, jaw clenched, brows slightly knit.

" _Right_?"

He hesitates, then gives a brief, grudging nod.

Sarah lets out a breath. She'd suspected as much, but to have it _confirmed_ …

"What I'm asking for," she says, once she's sure her voice will be steady, "is time. Time to—to get to know you. When we're not—"

She casts around for the right words, and her memory throws up a scene from their last confrontation. _You've always fancied yourself the hero, haven't you, Sarah?_ She sees again the sneer upon his face, feels the bitter lash of his mockery. And she remembers, too, how he had once hurled his misdeeds at her feet— _Everything that you wanted, I have done_ —and called it generosity.

And in some twisted way, she realizes, it was.

_He really thinks like that_. _Good, bad—right, wrong—it's all just_ _words_ _to him, like parts in a play._

She can see now how much he'd loathed it, the way she'd cast him in the role of villain—how much it galled him to be _reduced_ in that way. Not that it ever stopped him from playing the part to perfection.

Well, she can use that.

"When we're not playing hero and villain."

Something shifts subtly in his expression—a flicker of surprise, a certain sharpening of attention.

Emboldened, she continues. "I need time when we're not at conflict, so I can figure out whether I could—whether I _can_ —spend eternity with you."

She watches his face work—she can see he's trying to decide whether or not to take this as an insult.

"I want to _try_ ," she stresses— _lies_.

He's silent for a long time. Her heart is pounding in her throat.

Because this is it. Her last chance. She's out of clever ideas. If this doesn't work… she's fucked. Upside down and sideways, for all eternity.

_Come on, Goblin King_ , she urges him silently, fingernails scoring little half-moons of tension into her palms.

Finally, he speaks.

"How long?"

Almost giddy with relief and the first, faint glimpse of victory, she ventures: "A year?"

His eyebrows fly up.

"What a flattering estimation of my powers you have. But I'm afraid even I cannot hold the mortal world in stasis for a _year_ while you make up your mind." He taps his lip with a long, elegant finger. "Perhaps a week—a month at most— But my duties Below…"

"What? No!" she says, with a little too much vehemence. The idea of being stuck here with him with all the world frozen around them… "No," she says, more calmly. "That would be ridiculous. I never—I wouldn't _ask_ you…"

His eyebrows rise, if anything, even higher.

"What then?"

"I thought," she says, cursing herself for the sudden hesitance in her voice, "you could heal Alisse _now_. Sort of, like, a good will gesture. And then we could have our year."

His face closes down. Clearly he hasn't been taken in by her crafty use of 'our.'

"Yes, I imagine you did think that. And then, at the end of the year, should you decide you _cannot_ bear to pass eternity by my side, you and your friend will stroll off into the sunset together, is that it?"

"No, no, of course not! In that case—"

She pauses, willing her heart to stop racing, her voice to remain steady, her breathing to slow.

Because this is it, the moment on which everything hinges. She has to word this next bit carefully—otherwise, the game is up.

She looks him in the eye. "In that case, I'll settle this year's Tithe myself."

He actually takes a step back.

"You?" His voice is incredulous. " _You_ would wish away a full contingent of Tithe payments?"

Well, no. Of course she won't. She'll just have to figure out a way to end the damn thing for good—settle this year's and _every_ year's Tithe in one go. But she can hardly tell _him_ that.

"I could always choose bad people," she says. "Murderers and rapists and stuff. Couldn't I?"

"You could at that," he says, looking faintly and ever-so-grudgingly impressed.

He tilts his head, regarding her with a calculating expression on his face. She puts up her chin, before being hit with a sudden surge of doubt—defiant gestures aren't exactly _on message_ —and turning her head away. He huffs out a laugh, as if he knows exactly what she's been thinking, and she feels her cheeks grow hot.

Strangely enough, it's that little assertion of independence—of _challenge_ —that seems to convince him. Maybe she's been overplaying the whole conciliatory aspect. The Goblin King is many things, but a fool isn't one of them.

"Six months," he says at last, a trace of amusement still in his voice. "The Tithe is due in six months, as measured by your Aboveground reckoning."

It takes her a moment to realize that this isn't just information—it's an _answer_.

"Six months," she agrees, feeling light-headed—almost elated. She's riding high now, buoyed up on the confidence of these small victories. What's six months? She beat his damn Labyrinth in only ten hours—six months should be plenty of time to save the world. And if it isn't…

Well, she'll deal with that when it comes.

Dimly, she remembers that she'd once been horrified by this sort of responsibility, the _uncertainty_ of it—that the last time he'd offered her this kind of power—over life, over death—she'd refused. How strange. Perhaps it's just that back then, her hands had been clean.

But that had been the dream of a child, to imagine that all she had to do was play a game and that would somehow undo the wrong she'd done. A simple tit for tat. She knows better now. You can't just solve a puzzle and fix everything that's been broken. Life is harder than that—uglier, more complicated—infinitely more interesting. There is no going back. There's only _forward_ , and the choices you make to take you there. And in this moment of realization—it's almost _thrilling_ , honest to god it is. How could she ever have run from this? Bearing this kind of responsibility—saving lives—saving the _world_ … It's what she was born for. It's what she was _made_ for. Nothing could be more natural. Nothing could be more _right_.

Speaking of saving the world, though, that might be hard to pull off if she's spending the next six months under his watchful and jealous eye. She needs to find some way to buy herself a bit of freedom—or, at the very least, some breathing room.

She casts her eyes about the room, searching for inspiration, and her gaze lands on Alisse where she lies in her hospital bed, cold and pale as marble.

"The time can't start right away though," she says. "When Alisse wakes up, she'll _need_ me."

A perfect excuse. It even has the virtue of being true.

Then she realizes what she's been thinking. It hits her like a sucker-punch to the gut, knocking the air right out of her. When had Alisse become an _excuse_?

But Jareth is looking unimpressed, and Sarah presses on, ignoring the guilt—the shock and the shame which clamor at the back of her mind.

"What'll it be like for her, waking up from a coma to find her mother _and_ her best friend vanished off the face of the earth? She won't know what's going on, she won't be able to pay _rent_ —" _It even has the virtue of being true_ , a voice mocks in her head and she breaks off in distress.

But Jareth appears to have unbent a little.

"I could make her forget about you," he offers. "Spare her the pain."

She recoils. "No!"

He taps his boot on the floor. "Six months is the time at your disposal. If you wish to squander some of that time playing nursemaid to your ailing friend, far be it from me—"

"You could always give me free passage—a way to come and go between your world and mine." She tries to make her voice light, as if she's merely offering a solution to a mutual inconvenience.

"Oh, I think _not._ You wreaked quite enough havoc in my realm during one _supervised_ visit. I hate to think what would become of the Underground if a living Sarah Williams were given free rein."

He folds his arms, drumming his fingers and looking irritable, but there's a gleam of something like—could it be _anticipation?_ —in his eyes.

"Two months, surely, will be time enough for you to console your friend and make your excuses? Two months, then I'll come for you."

"Two months," she agrees.

So, she has two months to find a way to move between the Underground and the Aboveground on her own, and four more to figure out how to put a stop to this Tithe business once and for all. _Piece of cake_ , she thinks recklessly. _Keep the challenges coming. Throw 'em at me._

He narrows his eyes. "And the mother? Or is she classed among the murderers and villains you have no qualms in consigning to my care?"

Her breath hitches. In the rush of triumph, she'd almost forgotten—

But no. She rallies herself. That's the whole point, isn't it? If—no, she corrects herself, _when_ she stops the Tithe, she'll be sparing everyone who would otherwise be sacrificed, including Mrs. Rochefort.

But of course, he can't know that.

She forces a shoulder up in something approximating a casual shrug. "What's said is said."

He arches his brows. Once again, she is reminded that he is not a fool.

She turns her head aside and swallows. "Besides. Alisse is better off without her."

She glances back at him. He's looking at her speculatively. As she meets his gaze, his eyelids lower and a smirk begins to play about the corners of his mouth.

"As you say," he murmurs.

Her stomach twists.

It's true, what she'd said—that's the worst of it. All she had to do was speak her mind, and as the words left her mouth they became the justification for a woman's death.

_Stop that_ , she tells herself sharply. _They're just_ _words_ _. You're going to_ _fix_ _this. That's all that matters._

"So," she says. "You'll heal Alisse fully from her accident as soon as these terms are—" What was the word he had used, that night at the rave? "—are _pacted_. Then you'll give me six Aboveground months to decide whether or not I can spend eternity with you—"

"To decide whether or not you _will_ give me your death," he corrects, sharply.

_Damn_. She'd been hoping he wouldn't notice that. Still, it doesn't much matter if the phrasing of the vow forces a choice when she already knows what her choice will be.

"—to decide whether or not I will give you my death, during which time—" She fixes him with a gimlet-eyed glare. "—you won't seek to force or coerce me or otherwise prevent me from making such a choice with a clear mind and a free will."

"An unnecessary clause," he interjects. "I have only such power over you as you give me, Sarah."

"Nevertheless."

They stand there for a moment in a silent battle of wills. Then he breaks eye contact, gesturing impatiently for her to continue. She does not miss the brief look of almost sulky disappointment which crosses his face.

_Spoiled your fun, have I, Goblin King?_ she thinks, exhilarated. All that time working as a paralegal has clearly paid off. Maybe her father is right about a career in law—does it always feel like this, gaining concessions? _Winning_?

"You'll give me the first two of those six months to stay Aboveground and deal with my affairs. At the end of those two months, you may take me Underground. Within those six months, I'll make a choice: either I'll give you my death, or I'll resolve the current Tithe myself."

The Goblin King looks at her expectantly, as though waiting for something. When nothing more is forthcoming, he grins. It is not an appealing grin. His face is so white under the fluorescent lights that his jagged teeth look almost yellow in contrast—how could she ever, even for a moment, have thought herself _attracted_ to him?

She has time, before he speaks, for a brief moment of panic. What could have made him smile like that? Surely she hasn't _missed_ anything?

"So pacted," he says.

There's a surge of power. Sarah shudders as she feels it pass through her, echoing through her bones. Will she ever get used to it, this strange, alien magic?

Not, she reminds herself, that she'll have to. Six months. Six months, and then she'll be free.

She wonders why she doesn't feel more relieved.

Jareth strolls over to the bed, stopping when he's level with Alisse's hip. Sarah tenses, and he shoots her an ironic look.

"I'm merely fulfilling my end of the bargain as stipulated."

He extends a black-gloved hand over Alisse's unconscious form and squeezes it shut. When he opens it again, a small pile of glittering dust rests on his palm. Lowering his head, he blows on the dust, which spreads lengthwise over Alisse's body. It hovers in the air for a moment, a shimmering cloud with the exact contours of her form. Then, slowly, it sinks earthwards, vanishing when it comes into contact with her skin. For a moment, Alisse herself seems to sparkle. It makes her look…strange, inhuman, her skin alight with a twinkling, otherworldly luminescence. Then the effect is gone and she is the same as before, if a little rosier in color.

Jareth stands over her a moment longer, his hand outstretched, smiling a smile of catlike satisfaction.

"She'll wake as soon as the clock resumes."

He turns away, and, reaching Sarah in a few steps, takes her hand in one of his own and raises it to his lips. Shocked, she lets him. His lips brush her skin in a brief and burning caress before she remembers herself and snatches her hand away.

He smiles at her fondly, showing no sign of offense. "A pleasure, as always. What an admirable queen you'll make, such a shrewd negotiator as you have become."

Sketching a little bow, he turns on his heel and is gone.

The noise of the hospital comes roaring back, but Sarah stays where she is, frozen, struggling to process everything that has just happened. A sudden wave of dizziness comes over her and she half sits, half falls into one of the visitor's chairs, pressing a hand to her forehead.

The door swings open. Sarah looks up to see Ernie standing on the threshold.

_How_ — To have gotten here so fast, he must have been right outside…

She looks from him to the half-opened blinds covering the windows into the hallway. It would have been so easy, given the magnitude of her distraction, to miss someone standing on the other side of the window… Oh no. Oh _no_.

Ernie turns his head back and forth, searching the room for something. Before her eyes, his face grows pale. He turns to look at her; his lips are trembling.

"What the hell is going on?" he asks hoarsely. "Where did Mrs. Rochefort go? How did you just—just _teleport_ across the room? And what the fuck was that about gob—"

He stops short, cut off by a sudden beeping from one of the machines near Alisse's bed. There's the sound of footsteps in the hallway. A nurse hurries in, takes one look at the machine, and pulls out her pager.

And Alisse—

Sarah's breath catches.

Alisse is opening her eyes. She stares blearily around the room, before focusing on Sarah. She opens her mouth, but her voice is so little and croaky that Sarah can barely make out the words. By the time she processes them, she and Ernie have been swept from the room on a tide of doctors and nurses.

Out in the hallway, Sarah begins to laugh. She laughs and laughs until her legs give way and she's sliding down the wall and onto the floor.

Ernie crouches beside her, looking frightened and uncertain. "Williams? Sarah? Are you okay?"

She shakes her head, then nods.

"You're sending me mixed signals here."

"I'm fine," she gasps out. "Fine, fine, everything's _fine_."

"What the hell did she _say_ to you to set you off like that?"

She turns a face streaming with tears up to look at him.

"She said—" She breaks off, hiccoughing. Her mind is in disarray; the past is a jumble and the future is _fucked_ , but there's a smile like sunrise spreading across her face. "She said, 'I'd kill for a margarita: this is the worst hangover of my life.'"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaannnnd we're off! Out of the starting gates, it's Joan of Arc in the lead. Plucky little thing isn't she? But, if rumors are true, with a kick on her you wouldn't believe. Joanie is this season's favorite, ever since her unlikely defeat of reigning champion Magic Pants two races ago. But can she do it again? Last race was one for the judges. She's got a comfortable lead over Magic Pants, but is he outmatched or merely biding his time? Hold onto your hats, folks, because it's the race of the century!
> 
> (lol i know n0thing about horseracing can u tell?)
> 
> Anyway, we've finished our first arc ("Quaaludes and Red Wine"). Part two coming soon to an archive near you! (And don't worry, I'm not actually going to make you wait two months of story time to see Jareth again.)
> 
> Also, by soon, I mean "soonish" because I've just started a new degree and grad school takes precedence (or at least, it should). So, if there's a long(er) gap between updates, know that I haven't abandoned this fic, I'm just off trying to be an adult and will certainly get back to things over break at the latest.
> 
> Trying to keep tabs on my influences here, and Exulansis's depiction of Jareth ("I want you to be happy nearly as much as I want you to be mine") in Iron and Crystal was in my mind through much of the second half of this chapter. If you haven't read Iron and Crystal, go hit it up now for your daily Dark Jareth fix. Delish. The first half of this chapter borrows much from the Gentleman with the Thistle-Down Hair, the tow-headed fairy antagonist from Susanna Clarke's brilliant Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
> 
> Soundtrack:
> 
> "The Kingdom of the Universe," by Ashley Park.  
> "Stupid Thing," by Nickel.  
> "Extreme Ways," by Moby.  
> "Glory," by Wye Oak.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who left kudos and most especially to Yarnaholic, mine321, BriarLily, blacknoddy, Exulansis, paisleycats, simulacraryn, Clandistera, ohmyfish, OpalElephant, Origamigryphon, 73880, assbuttofthelord15, nightangelerik, and Ms_Sadie_Rae for reviewing. Your reviews make me so happy and inspired and I promise I'll stop responding to them drunk. (TWIMC: Sozza)
> 
> Give me your poor, your tired, your hungry—your laughter and your sorrows, your glee and your frustration, your questions, your answers, and your Mom's home-made apple pie.
> 
> Ta!
> 
> Silks


	9. Childhood's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah deals with the immediate aftermath of her bargain, with mixed results. Also featuring the return of something which seemed relatively minor at the time but is now revealed to be a major plot point! 
> 
> (tbh that’s like the whole story: “Hey, remember that thing? Of course you don’t! Well, it was important.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOO BOY, that was even longer than expected. It’s been a rough couple of months, both personally and, ya know, geopolitically. This story remains a big passion project, though, and I’m optimistic about being able to pick up a more regular posting schedule again. Thanks for sticking with me this far: your comments and kudos give me such naches, I can’t even. 
> 
> EDIT: I've now posted the updated version of this chapter--this is the correct and final version.
> 
> Anyway, WELCOME TO PART II. We’re about a quarter of the way through the story now. Parts II & III constitute an expansion in almost every sense: plot, character, setting, tone, lore... Part IV ties all the threads together (including the blood and hair, guys, I'm glad you haven't forgotten about that because it's coming back but not for a little while yet) and takes us down the rocky road to our conclusion. RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU ARE EXCITED FOR CHARACTER GROWTH, ADVENTURE, AND EVENTUAL CONSENSUAL SMOOCHIES(/sexy timez)!!
> 
> So, on the one hand, expect a bit more humor. We'll be returning to the Labyrinth. It will be whimsical. How could it not be. On the other hand, Sarah is entering as an adult now, and she's going to be seeing and dealing with a lot of new things and the world/culture of the Underground has some pretty dark/horrific elements. There will be sex, and not just the fun smutty kind. There will be violence. Rule of thumb: if you're a Game of Thrones fan, nothing here will faze you. If you find GoT utterly horrifying, maybe best quit now. If you're somewhere in the middle, keep reading, but please use the trigger warnings as needed. Also feel free to contact me on tumblr (@whenas-in-silks) with any questions.
> 
> TW [See profile for details]: referenced (i), (l), (q), (ac), (aw), (az)
> 
> Thanks as ever to my incredible beta syntheticaesthetic, as well as my deeply adored incandescent for jumping in and saving my sanity with auxiliary betaing services, and an extra special thanks to my good (RL!) friend R, who despite having zero interest in fandom, David Bowie, or Labyrinth sat down with me and helped me not only patch a plothole, but do it in such a way that it made the whole damn story stronger. Also, thanks to everyone who checked in and gave me polite nudges during the long hiatus (kittyspike, sazzle76, meemalee, and FelineNinjaGrace). Y’all rock.

**PART II: Still Alive**

* * *

**Chapter 9 **

**Childhood’s End**

* * *

_You set sail across the sea_  
_of long past thoughts and memories._  
_Childhood's end, your fantasies_  
_merge with harsh realities._

“Childhood’s End,” Pink Floyd.

* * *

_Someone like you_  
_should not be allowed_  
_to start any fires._

“Win,” David Bowie.

* * *

**Now**

Sarah doesn’t want to be here.

She’s sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs in Alisse’s hospital room, struggling to focus on the conversation, which fades in and out like a radio with a bad signal.

“—not _believe_ the shit they try and pass off as food here,” Alisse is saying, casting herself back against the pillows.

“This from a woman whose idea of a balanced breakfast is Easy Mac and bottom-shelf bourbon,” Ernie responds easily. Sarah envies him that ease, the luxury of it. After all, he’s not the one about to put the torch to a decade-old friendship.

The voices begin to blur once more as Sarah’s heart rate increases, as the dread creeps over her, stifling her. _I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to BE HERE._

She’d wanted to wait—ideally _forever_ , but at the very least until Alisse got out of the hospital. But as Ernie had pointed out, they didn’t have forever. They had two months, and they _still_ didn’t know when Alisse would be discharged, _and_ —here he had lowered his chin and peered at her over the top of his glasses, gaze unwavering, voice firm with a conviction that went beyond the need for justification—Alisse had a _right to know_. All of her arguments and entreaties had withered in the face of that conviction, the ease of it, a supreme confidence in his moral judgement that was so familiar and yet so remote from her in that moment that she’d had to turn her face away (and don’t _think_ about that now, don’t _think_ about it)—

“…much longer they’re going to keep you here?”

“Just a few more days for observation, I think. I’m seriously considering just checking myself out. I mean, I feel _fine_.”

“Still no idea what happened?” Ernie flashes Sarah a brief but significant look.

Her stomach clenches.

“Nope. Kind of crazy, really.”

Sarah swallows; she doesn’t need Ernie’s second, pointed glance to know that this is her cue. She parts her lips but her mouth has gone dry as cotton. All of the moisture in her body seems to have been diverted to her palms, which are sweating enough to irrigate a damn desert.

The silence stretches out. Alisse glances from Ernie to Sarah, her gaze inquiring.

Ernie clears his throat.

“Been getting a lot of visitors?”

Sarah lets out a surreptitious breath.

“Oh yeah, lousy with them,” Alisse says, relaxing back against the pillows. “Some people from work, a few from school…”

“Nina mentioned she’d been by.”

Alisse pulls a face. “Yeah. It was just about the most awkward twenty minutes of my life. I was seriously expecting her to break out the healing crystals at any moment.”

Ernie sighs. “Would it actually kill the two of you to get along?”

“Probably!” Alisse says cheerfully.

“So, Sarah, me, Nina, some people from work and school. Anyone else?” Ernie presses.

Alisse frowns. “Why, someone you were expecting? … Oh.”

Sarah realizes what he’s getting at a split second after Alisse does. The bottom drops out of her stomach as she watches Alisse’s eyes hood, the corners of her mouth tighten—and isn’t it a knife to the side, how much she resembles her mother in that moment.

“Claudine hasn’t been by, if that’s what you mean.”

Sarah lets go of the breath she’s been holding. “Alisse, I'm so sorry. They asked me for next of kin, and it was right after the accident and I wasn't thinking and I just—”

She cuts herself off as Alisse gives a little twitch of the shoulders, shaking off the apology like a horse shaking off a fly.

“It’s not like she’s been around to bug me, anyway.” Alisse pulls a face. “I mean, I'm _glad_ , I don't _want_ to see her, I don’t want anything to _do_ with her. It's just—”

Her mouth twists savagely. “It doesn't make any fucking _sense_. When she kicked me out, I thought— I mean, three years and _nothing_ from her, and then… _this_ happens, and she’s dropping everything and flying halfway across the country and taking everything over, and the minute I’m not dying she just… _vanishes_? They told me they tried calling her hotel room and her house in Ohio but there's _nothing_ , she's just _gone_ , and I've never understood her and I hate that I'm even wasting time _trying_ but it’s just— just _why_?”

She raises her eyes to Sarah’s, and Sarah understands why Ernie had been so insistent about telling Alisse the truth. Because she knows that look, that roiling mixture of bewilderment and hurt and anger and doubt, and over and through it all, the shame of feeling anything at all. That’s what it looks like, when the magic comes and leaves you in its wake, an abandonment all the more painful—and all the more haunting—for being inexplicable. That much, at least, she can do something about.

“So. About that…”

* * *

**Two Days Ago**

Ernie had cornered her the minute they’d left Alisse’s room that first day.

They’d been allowed twenty minutes before Alisse was whisked off for more tests, and all that time, even through the tears and the laughter and the explanations, some part of Sarah lay coiled tight as a spring, readying herself for flight.

She made it halfway down the corridor before Ernie called her name, but she’d planned for that too. She stopped, letting her shoulders droop and lifting one hand to her cheek as if to dash away a tear. Then she straightened and turned around, face twisting into a rueful smile.

“Hey, do you mind giving me a sec? It’s been a hell of a day and I just need a minute to…” She gestured vaguely towards herself, allowing the smile to slip a fraction.

There was a back exit just a few corridors down from the woman’s bathroom. If she could just get away—buy herself some time to _think_...

“Oh, um…” Just as she’d predicted, the emotional appeal threw him off balance; she could see it on his face, sympathy warring with suspicion. “Yeah, that’s fine. I can wait.”

She breathed a sigh of real relief. “Thanks,” she said. “I won’t be long. Meet you in the waiting room?”

She realized her mistake when he stiffened, eyes narrowing. “That’s fine, I can wait here.”

Her eyes flicked nervously towards the bathroom, clearly visible from where they stood in the hallway. _Not_ a viable escape route.

“I, uh, don’t think they like people loitering in the hallways. Maybe it would be better if—”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

She froze. “Sorry, what?”

The warmth was gone from his eyes. “What exactly do you think is going to happen? Even if you managed to sneak past me now, I know _where you live_.”

She raised a hand to her forehead, aware of pressure building there. “I _know_ you do.”

She’d have to get a hotel, of course, somewhere out of town, off the highway, maybe. Yes, that sounded right. A drive to clear her head, and then somewhere safe to spend the night—safe because strange, because new.

“Ernie,” she began, “I don’t know what this is about, but—”

“Don’t you?” His voice was uncharacteristically high, with an edge to it she’d never heard before.

“—but whatever it is, can we not do it here?” She pressed her hand harder to her temple, feeling the pulse hammering away beneath her skin.

The walls of the corridor had begun to creep in close around her. Her chest tightened. She needed air—needed to _breathe_.

Concern surfaced on his face. “Are you—”

If she had been cleverer—stronger— _more worthy_ , she would have taken that concern and used it, but this was too raw, too _real_ , and instead she pulled away. She caught a glimpse of hurt on his face before it hardened, growing resolute.

“Parking lot,” he suggested, brusquely.

They made their way to the parking lot in silence. Sarah’s car came into view, and half out of habit, she reached into her pocket for her keys. Quick as a flash, Ernie stepped in front of her, blocking her path.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Ernie—”

“You’re going to tell me everything that’s going on, and you’re going to tell me _now_.” His voice was shaking, and she realized for the first time that it wasn’t anger that drove him—or, not _just_ anger.

She drew in a lungful of cool air, willing her mind to unfog, her pulse to slow. “Ernie, I—”

He didn’t wait for the lie. “And don’t you _dare_ try to bullshit me and say it’s nothing. I know what I saw!”

“Well, I don’t!”

“I saw _you_ , arguing with Mrs. Rochefort, and then Mrs. Rochefort vanished, and you were suddenly on the other side of the room like you'd fucking teleported there, and and all of a sudden Alisse was all better when she should have been _dead_!”

In the silence, Ernie’s breath was quick and shallow. His final word hung in the air between them, jagged as a knife and nowhere near as quick.

After a long moment, he wiped a hand across his face. “Fuck,” he said. “Look, I’m not— I’m handling this badly, I know, but—” He made a brief, abortive gesture, as if he’d meant to reach out to her, then thought better of it. “I’m not your enemy, Sarah. At least, I don’t think I am. I’m just trying to _understand_.” He spoke the word like a plea—like an offering. When she didn’t respond immediately, he raised his hands slowly, palms open and empty, as if she were a wild creature he was afraid of startling. “Whatever happened—whatever this is, it’s obviously distressing you, and I just… I’m your friend, Sarah, I want to _help_ , but there’s nothing I can do if you won’t _let me in_.”

She had relaxed infinitesimally, but at that she flinched back. There was something in his voice as he said those last words—the faintest tinge of hunger—and a vision rose in her mind of herself lying anatomized upon a table, secrets laid open and bare to the world.

She wrapped her arms around herself, turning her face in towards her shoulder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was faintly astonished at the evenness of her voice, as if every last shred of her calmness—her control—were being measured out in those few syllables. “It’s been a pretty upsetting day for both of us, and I think we both need to go home and get some rest.”

“No.”

Something seized within her chest. Her eyes flew up to meet his. 

“I’m not letting you out of my sight until you tell me what’s going on.”

Her heart had begun to pound. _Trapped_ , something sang out within her. _Trapped, trapped!_

“Well?”

She wondered what would happen if she just rushed him, or maybe if she turned on her heel and bolted. He was taller than she was, but she was in better shape—she could probably outrun him. And then—and then…

The blood was roaring so loudly in her ears that she almost missed his next words.

“This isn’t going away, you know,” he said, voice hard. “I saw what I saw, and however much you might wish it hadn’t happened, I’m not going to just—”

Her head snapped up, the motion followed by a rush of dizziness.

“Wish?” she echoed. “ _Wish_?”

A laugh escaped her.

Because, of course, she could. There was that. There was always _that_ —always and forever _him_ , only a wish away. All she’d have to do was call, and he’d come and—and wipe Ernie’s mind, or—or yes, re-order time, unstitch history, rewrite reality, anything, _anything_ to _make it not have happened_.

Her breathing was growing shallower.

And it was wrong, it was wrong, of _course_ it was wrong, but it would be so _easy_. He might not even charge her much for it, not if she spun it right. (She pressed her palms to her forehead.) After all, this was probably some kind of—of Underground security breach. He had as much reason to want this dealt with as she did—they were _natural allies…_

And that was wrong too, all, wrong, wrong, but the words had lodged in her throat so she was half-afraid she might choke and her head was full of cotton wool and broken glass and—

“Sarah?”

She looked up into Ernie’s face, which suddenly seemed a very long way away, as though she were seeing it at the end of a tunnel. Then the image blurred and she felt a coolness on her face. She touched her hand to her cheek and pulled it away wet.

“Sarah, are you okay?”

_I’ve sprung a leak_ , she thought, inanely.

Then she turned her head aside and was violently sick all over the pavement.

Somehow, as if she were expelling the panic and all the pent-up emotion along with the contents of her stomach, her mind quieted as she knelt there, retching. She became aware of a presence behind her and a weight lifted from her neck, and she realized Ernie had come up behind her and was holding back her hair. She felt the distance between their bodies and wondered if he was trying to be respectful of her personal space, or if he was afraid to come closer.

“I—I think I’m okay now,” she said, once the aftershocks had died away, and instantly, he moved away. She felt a wrench of something that was probably shame, but somewhere along the course of that godawful day she must have lost a certain emotional sensitivity, because it mostly felt like exhaustion.

Slowly she straightened, pushing her hair back from her face. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him yet.

“I’ll tell you,” she said, voice rough, defeated. “I will, just—not tonight. Let me have tonight.”

“So you can get your story straight?” His voice was surprisingly calm—almost sympathetic.

“No! I mean, yes, but not like that.” She shook her head, then stopped as another wave of nausea came over her. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re not exactly making it easy.”

“It’s _not_ easy. It’s—for fuck’s sake, I thought it was _over_. It’s been years and years, and I thought— I’ve never told anyone, do you understand? Not anyone. And now it’s back and I’ve gone and—and everything is—is—and I can’t—I _can’t_ —” Her voice cracked. “I will tell you, I _will_ , just give me until tomorrow. I’m so _tired_ , Ernie, I can’t—just— _Please_. Tomorrow.”

He hesitated.

“Just tell me this. Mrs. Rochefort disappearing. Was that—did you have something to do with that?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“And Alisse’s recovery?”

“ _Yes_. Ernie, for Christ’s sake—”

“All right,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

* * *

She was on his doorstep at 9am the following morning.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, before he even had a chance to ask what she was doing there eight hours before they’d planned on meeting. “I figured I might as well just, you know, get it over with. Like ripping off a band-aid. Can I come in?”

They sat in the kitchen, two mugs of coffee steaming untouched on the table before them, while she told him all about the slim, leather-bound volume she’d found at the back of her bookshelf the summer after she’d turned fourteen, and about her stupid, impulsive wish and everything that followed.

She’d rehearsed it, after a fashion, tossing and turning in her bed, going through the events point by point, dry and methodical as a lawyer, but once she began to speak, all that preparation went out the window. It was as if the story had lain in wait for years, crouching just behind her teeth, and now that its time had come, had seized control of her tongue and begun to tell itself. At times, she felt like little more than a spectator—at others, more like a castaway, battered and rudderless, helpless in the flood of her own confession.

Ernie heard her out in silence, chin propped on his elbows, gaze fixed and uncomfortably intent. When at last the deluge ceased, he waited a beat or two, then slumped back in his chair.

“Okay,” he said. Then, apparently feeling this wasn’t enough. “Okay, yeah. Wow. Jesus.” He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “That’s… _definitely_ not what I was expecting you to say.”

“Oh? What were you expecting?” She’d meant it to sound wry but it came out brittle—anxious.

“I don’t know _what_ I was expecting. I thought you were going to tell me you were part of the FBI or the Illuminati or something. I thought you were going to come out as one of the freaking _X-Men_.”

“Would you rather I _was_ one of the X-Men?” Sarah asked, feeling strangely defensive. After all these years of silence, that she should finally tell someone her story and he should think it was the _wrong one_ …

Ernie gave a strangled sort of laugh. “It would’ve been a lot easier to process, that’s for sure. I might’ve expected something like this from one of the girls in Nina’s coven, but from _you…_ ” He trailed off, shoulders stiffening, and eyes going wide. “Oh my god. Does this mean all that stuff is _real_?”

“What ‘stuff’?”

He didn’t answer, just leapt to his feet and began pacing the length of his tiny kitchen.

“What _stuff_ , Ernie?”

“What?” he said distractedly. “Oh. Oh, you know, the séances and the tarot cards and the prayers to the Great Mother Goddess. It’s not important right now, it—” He shook his head, one hand rising to cover his mouth, the other burying itself once more in the thickets of his hair. “I have _so many_ questions. Like, let’s start with the book you found. That’s got to be a plant, right? Is that their usual method of entrapment? And why target you?”

Sarah’s head was starting to spin. “Could you slow down for just a second?”

“And don’t even get me started on this soul business. Your Goblin King says he doesn’t have one, but obviously he’s still walking around with thoughts and feelings and memories, so clearly we’re not talking souls in the Platonic—”

“Stop,” she interjected, almost shouting now. “ _Stop!_ ”

Obligingly, he came to a halt, looking at her with bright, expectant eyes.

“I just…” She shook her head. “You … believe me?” The words felt strange and heavy on her tongue.

“Believe you?” He cocked his head to one side, frowning a little, as if the question had taken him by surprise. “Jesus. I don’t know. I don’t know! I mean, it’s insane, whichever way you slice it. It’s all completely batshit absolutely frigging insane. Would _you_ believe you? No, don’t answer that. But— God, Sarah.” He turned away from her and walked to the window, gripping the sill, gaze fixed on some indefinable point in the street below. “Do you have any idea what the implications of this are? If even a fraction of what you’ve said is true? All this stuff about that Goblin King guy wanting you to promise him your death… Do you realize you may have come closer than any living person to proving the existence of an afterlife?” He shook his head again, then turned to look at her, and she saw with astonishment and mounting alarm that he was _smiling_. “Theologians, historians, anthropologists, _zoologists_ … even physicists—all of them would kill for just a glimpse at what you’ve seen. This could be the most important discovery since _Copernicus_ , and no one even _knows_ …”

Sarah stared at him, at the way his eyes were shining, and felt her mouth go dry. “Ernie.” She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the table. “You can’t—you can’t _tell_ anyone about this.”

“Tell any— You mean, like, the _government_?” His expression transformed to one of wounded incredulity. “I’m not going to sic the feds on you, Williams.” His mouth quirked. “I mean, c’mon, I’ve _read_ science-fiction.”

“I’m talking about the historians and scientists and—and doctors and all that.”

He hadn’t actually mentioned doctors, but that was what she was worried about, of course—people in white coats coming to cart her away. It hadn’t even occurred to her to worry about the government, and Jesus God, was that something she had to be afraid of now, on top of everything else? Would she have to flinch every time her doorbell rang in case it was Scully and Mulder on the other side?

“Of course I’m not going to tell them. I mean, who in their right mind would believe it?” He thought for a moment. “I mean, apart from Nina. She’ll believe every single word of it, no question. She might even know something about this Goblin King already. Yeah, I’d say get her onboard ASAP. _God_ , I can’t believe I called her Beltane festival demi-religious LARPing. She’s never going to let me hear the end of this.”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah dug her fingers into her arms, feeling the crawl of agitation beneath her skin. The conversation was quickly becoming maddening. It was like walking up to the scaffold, only for the hangman to start doing rope tricks with the noose. “Onboard for what? You’re not making any sense!”

Ernie blinked. “Onboard for Team Save-the-World, of course. Team Defeat-the-Goblin-King. Was that not clear? We’re really going to need a better team name though.” And he smiled at her, as if this were the most natural response in the world.

“But—” she stammered, “but you don’t even believe me!”

He frowned a little, as if in thought. “I’m… not too sure about what I do or don’t believe right now. I just— two days ago, my life made sense. It made really, really awful sense, but it made sense. And then yesterday… _happened_ , and I don’t know if you’re telling the truth about what went down, or if you’re lying, or nuts, or we both are, but whatever’s going on, it’s totally beyond anything I ever imagined, and now that I’ve got hold of it, there’s no _way_ I’m letting go.”

The light was back in his eyes, and there was something about his voice as he spoke—the mixture of awe and eagerness, mixed with the total, unthinking confidence that this world, newly opened to him, was his for the taking—so that for a moment she felt jealousy, black and ugly, clawing its way up from her chest and into her throat. That he should so casually lay claim to all of this, when it was hers, it was _hers_ , it had always _been_ hers, and hadn’t she _earned_ it? Hadn’t she fought and suffered and sacrificed for it?

Then she remembered exactly what she had sacrificed, and the magnitude of what she’d done and what she had still to do struck her anew.

All of a sudden it was just too much. Sarah lurched to her feet, pushing aside her chair.

“Sorry—I need a moment.”

She made her way down the narrow hall and out the back door into the back garden. It wasn’t much to look at—nine square yards of dead and dismal earth, the grass still brown with winter.

Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. For warmth, of course. It was a chilly morning, and she’d left her coat inside. That’s what she would tell Ernie, if he followed her.

She wanted a smoke, wanted one so badly her fingers trembled (she gripped her arms even tighter to still them) but her pack was in her jacket, which she’d left in the kitchen.

She took a breath instead, and then a deeper one. The air burned her throat like wintergreen. Spring came late to Boston, but it would be here soon, in a week, perhaps, maybe two. She could feel it in the air, a trembling possibility.

She could do this. She _would_ do it. She would do it because she had do it, because failure was all but inconceivable—because the shape of a world in which she failed was too terrible to be imagined, because she didn’t know who she would _be_ if she failed, except that such a person could never fit inside her skin. She would do it, and she would damn well take all the help she could get.

Ernie was still sitting at the kitchen table, gazing into his coffee cup, a slight frown etched between his brows. He looked up when Sarah entered, his eyes searching.

Sarah stuck out her hand, feeling faintly ridiculous for doing so, but the situation seemed strangely to call for formality, for some sort of—the word ‘pact’ rose to mind, and she shoved it down again—some kind of _something_.

“So,” she said. “Team Defeat-the-Goblin-King?”

The words felt wrong, too flippant, too _easy_ , but she shoved the feeling down as his face lit up.

“It’s a working title,” he said, reaching out and clasping her hand with a smile like Christmas morning.

“And you can arrange things with Nina?”

“Of course! We can even do it tonight, if you want. I’m pretty sure she’s free.”

“That sounds great,” she said, smiling at his eagerness, and felt a sudden swell of fondness inside her, liberally mixed with relief. This, at least, felt familiar—this felt _right_ , having friends, working together. This was the way the story should go. It was the way it had gone last time.

Then Ernie’s expression sobered a little, and he eyed her gravely, though not unsympathetically, through his glasses. “But first… you know who else you’re going to have to tell, don’t you?”

* * *

**Now**

Sarah pulls the door to Alisse's hospital room shut behind her and stands stock still in the hallway, eyes closed, fingers still wrapped, white-knuckled, around the door handle.

“Williams?”

Somewhere on the other side of the door, Alisse is weeping.

The sound of it makes her skin crawl and her stomach heave and her knees tremble, and she knows it’s wrong for her to still be here, eavesdropping on this private grief—this grief _she had caused_ —but she can’t bring herself to move. Standing here, listening to those choked and muffled sobs… it feels like a penance.

It doesn’t even matter that Alisse is crying for the wrong reason—crying not because Sarah had sacrificed her only living relation as part of some twisted bargain, but because she thinks her best friends have chosen this, the most vulnerable moment of her life, to play some sort of cruel practical joke.

_Alisse reached up, clutching her head. “I don’t understand,” she said, voice suddenly soft, sounding lost and bewildered and very, very young. “Do you think this is funny? Let’s all fuck with the chick with head trauma?”_

_“No.” Sarah’s voice had gone hoarse. “No, of course not.”_

_“Then why?” Alisse turned her face up to look at her, and Sarah was horrified to see unshed tears glistening in her eyes. “Why are you doing this?”_

_Sarah had tried to answer, she’d tried, but all she could think of to say was, “I’m sorry.”_

_And she’d sat there and watched as something vital drained from Alisse’s face. Her voice when she spoke was flat and dull. “Get out.”_

“Sarah?” Ernie's voice again, this time accompanied by a hand which places itself tentatively on her shoulder.

She jerks away from the touch, releasing the door handle as if she’d been burned.

“Let's go,” she says, roughly, not looking at him, and takes off at a punishing pace down the hallway. She can hear him following—even with his longer legs, she can tell he's struggling to keep up, and the knowledge gives her nothing but a faint, dull satisfaction that settles in the bottom of her stomach like a stone.

Out in the parking lot, she comes to a stop, shielding her eyes. The sun glares low and red on the horizon.

Ernie comes hurrying up behind her.

“Sarah,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

Sarah doesn't answer.

“I—I didn't realize how—”

“Yeah,” she says, voice low and even, simmering with an anger she’d only just noticed. “I think that's pretty clear.”

“This was my fault. I made a miscalculation.”

And how she hates him in that moment, a blistering, sickening resentment, for his deference and his remorse—for his knowledge and his presence—for witnessing— _witnessing_ …

“A miscalculation,” she echoes, voice savage with mockery. “Tell me, what has Alisse ever said or done that would make you think she would take this kind of thing _well_?”

Ernie swallows. “I knew she wouldn’t like it, I just—” He lifts his eyes to meet hers. “I thought she would believe—” He cuts himself off abruptly, but she can see the answer written on his face. _I thought she would believe you._

The pain of it breaks over her like a wave, like the answer to a question. There’s something almost soothing about it. This is, after all, nothing more than what she’d known would happen if she’d ever told anyone her secret—known for years and years, which is why she’d kept it locked tight inside her chest for so long, hidden even from herself. It was only Ernie, with his earnestness and his determination and his implausible _faith_ , that had allowed her to hope—

She takes a deep, shuddering breath.

It’s not Ernie’s fault, any of it. Not really. She knows that. _She_ was the one who made the wish. _She_ was the one who had allowed herself to be persuaded. She opens her mouth to tell him that, that it’s all right, that _he_ isn’t the one in the wrong, but somehow she can’t bring herself to say the words.

Instead she says, “I know we were supposed to meet up with Nina, but I’m not really feeling… Do you need me there or do you think you could…?”

“No,” he says hastily, “no, I’ve got it. Honestly,” he adds with a slight smile, “I’m not too worried. This is Nina we’re talking about. Believing in impossible things is practically her hobby.”

Sarah nods. “Let me know how it goes.” Then she turns and begins heading towards her car.

“Call you tomorrow then?” Ernie calls after her.

She waves a hand in acknowledgement, and keeps walking, Alisse’s last words still echoing in her ears.

_Ernie had already left the room, but Sarah paused in the doorway, looking back at her friend where she sat hunched in her hospital bed, rail-thin and terribly alone._

_“I—” she’d said. “I just wanted to— I never meant to hurt you. Never.”_

_Slowly, Alisse had raised her head. There was something almost dreamy about her gaze._

_“I just can’t believe,” she’d said, voice soft and laced with an emotion that was not anger or hurt but something far worse—something like resignation, “that you found some way to make this about you.”_

* * *

_She dreams of the hospital—not as it is in real life, but warped as through a crystal, a refraction of a memory. In her dream, everything seems stretched—etiolated—the walls taller and ever so slightly tilted, the rooms long and narrow. The light is paler, somehow, and shadows fall strangely, as if in obedience to some peculiar physics all their own._

_She’s looking for something in her dream, as she pads down interminable corridors lined with shut and silent doors. Occasionally she’ll pass a cluster of people, arranged in some familiar hospital tableau—a pair of white-coated doctors conferring over clipboards, a nurse in a surgical mask wheeling a patient on a gurney. They neither move nor speak, only watch her through glittering eyes set deep in impassive, masklike faces, heads turning in perfect synchronicity to track her passage._

_As she walks, things gradually begin to change, the hallways growing larger, more spacious. The light, too, is different, although she can’t say how. She sees no people now, although this does not surprise her._

_The door sits at the end of the corridor, a massive slab of wood, bulging and cracked with age. Yet it opens at the merest touch, swinging back and flooding her vision with light._

_Shielding her eyes against the glare, Sarah steps across the threshold and finds herself in the middle of a vast plain in high summer. The sun burns high and brightly overhead; the grass is dry and scrubby and crunches beneath her feet. Before her stretches a great staircase, three yards wide and built of yellow stone, worn and polished with use. She sets a foot upon the first step. The stone is warm, warm as the touch of the sun on the back of her neck._

_The earth falls away as she climbs. After a while, she begins counting the steps, but loses track somewhere in the seventies and has to start over. She stops for a moment to catch her breath, resting her hand on the step above her. There’s a roughness to the stone that she hadn’t felt before. The sun is growing hotter._

_She resumes climbing. The stone is harsh—untried—beneath her feet, and the sun beats down from overhead. A breeze comes and she turns her face into it. It carries with it the smell of sand and parched earth. Still she climbs, breathing labored, as her limbs grow sluggish and weary. The heat of the sun is like nothing she’s ever felt. She can feel her hair frizz and her skin begin to crisp. Her mouth is dry as bone._

_Her foot slips, and now she’s on her hands and knees, dragging herself up the endless staircase, and the light and the sun blinds her burns her chokes her and she can’t see she can’t see she can’t_

_…_

_…_

_…_

_The temple is cool, sheltered from the desert heat by thick stone walls, and dark but for the single, bright square of sunlight flooding in from an opening in the roof._

_“The Bull of Heaven is dead.”_

_The words, spoken in a rolling, musical contralto, are so strange—so unexpected—that it’s a moment before Sarah realizes they’ve come from their own lips._

_“He was a good servant to you, lady.”_

_A man kneels at her feet, face raised to hers. It’s a beautiful face—large, liquid eyes and sun-bronzed skin—but there’s something almost uncanny about its sculpted contours and too perfect curves—something inhuman and unsettlingly familiar._

_And what a strange thought that is, for how should his face not be familiar, when he has been her lover and her consort since the earth was young?_

_“A ‘good servant.’” Her lip curls. “What does it matter if he was a good servant or a bad? He was mine, and he was taken from me.” The words, again, are unexpected at first, but with them comes a blast of such blazing fury that she feels herself swept up by the feeling. Fury, and beneath that, something flat and blank and helpless._

_The man—Tammuz, her memory supplies—bows his head, accepting the reproach. After a moment, his eyes slide upwards to meet hers._

_“They say a mortal slew him.”_

_“They say,” she snarls, and there it is again, stronger than ever, that blank, helpless feeling flopping around inside her like a dying fish. She turns from him, striding away across the room. “They might as easily say the sun rises in the west.”_

_Behind her, she hears him rise and follow her. He wraps his arms around her stomach and nestles his face against her shoulder. “Shall I make the sun rise in the west for you?”_

_She smiles, arching her neck. “My Tammuz.” Her voice is soft, caressing. “Find out who did this—find out how they did this—and bring them to me.” Her smile hardens and she flexes her fingers, feeling the claws which lurk beneath the surface. “I will eat the living hearts from their chests.”_

_“It shall be done.”_

_“I know it.” She turns in his arms, cradling his face in her hands. “But before you depart, there is one more way you can serve me.”_

_And then he’s on his knees before her again, brushing her robe aside, and his lips are on her and the warm, wet swipe of his tongue—_

* * *

Sarah wakes with a gasp. At some point in her sleep she must have rolled onto her back, and her hand has worked its way beneath the waistband of her pajama bottoms. She snatches it away, face burning, and her color deepens as the air fills with the smell of her own arousal.

_Don’t be such a prude_ , she tells herself, rolling onto her side. It was obviously just some sort of weird, vaguely creepy erotic dream. Not even the weirdest one she’s had (or the creepiest, if it comes to that). Nothing to be ashamed of, and certainly no reason to feel like…like some sort of _voyeur_.

She shuts her eyes resolutely, but there’s something about the dream—some niggling sense of familiarity that won’t seem to leave her alone. The face of the man from her dream—what was his name again?—swims slowly to the surface of her mind. A pretty face—a bit too pretty for her taste, if truth be told—but there had been _something_ about it that had stirred her—she presses her thighs firmly together—even as it repulsed her—an almost rigid perfection of the features, as if the face he wore was nothing but a beautiful mask, covering up something unknown, something indescribably _other_ …

And she realizes where she’s seen a face like that before.

She lies there frozen—helpless—as the last scene from her dream unspools in her mind, only now it’s not a dark head before her _but a blond one_ , and she tries, she _tries_ to stop picturing it but all she can see i _s a pair of sly blue eyes canting upwards to meet hers while his hand slides slowly up her thigh, the fabric of her skirt bunching beneath leather-clad fingers…_

Sarah sits bolt upright in bed, flinging back the covers as the mattress groans in protest. Her breath is coming in pants, and her heart is pounding—pounding with fear, she tells herself, with confusion, with loathing, with anything— _anything_ —but…

Yanking the blankets from the bed and wrapping them around her, she shuffles into the kitchen. On the stove, she heats up some milk, topping it off with a generous slug of brandy, then stretches out on the living room couch. Gradually, the liquor and the reliable soporific of late-night television take effect, and she falls asleep to the sound of infomercials and re-runs of _Cheers_. Her sleep is fitful and uneasy, and she wakes aching and exhausted, but if she dreams again that night, she doesn’t remember it in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a lot of OC stuff this chapter, but we did have two confessions, one and a half nervous breakdowns, one broken friendship, one mysterious dream, and a fragment of a sexy Jareth fantasy? Yeah, sorry, apparently I’m constitutionally incapable of fan service. I actually wrote out Sarah’s fantasy in full, just to see if I was capable of writing smut, and then scrapped almost all of it because it was totally gratuitous and OOC at this point in the story. I’ve toyed with the idea of revising it and posting it as a kind of one-shot easter egg though (assuming I have time and creative energies to spare), so if that’s something you’d be interested in, let me know! 
> 
> UPDATE: I have since posted the deleted scene as a one shot--it's part of a series with Tithe so if you just click "next work" you can find it.
> 
> Songs:  
> “Childhood’s End,” by Pink Floyd.  
> “How Low,” by José González.  
> “Subterraneans,” by David Bowie.
> 
> Thanks so much to Farisya, assbuttofthelord15, mine321, Anisky, Sai, mewcowardlylion, MsZia, GeminiK, Senneres, Butt3rfly, Exulansis, 73880, and big leg for reviewing! Sorry for being crap about replying—I’ll be better this time around. Ya’ll are such joy, really—I’m so invested in this story and I still can’t get over the fact that there are other people who actually give a shit about it too. I realize it’s been ages, but if you’re still around and reading I’d love to hear from you!
> 
> Also, if you’re on tumblr, come hit me up @whenas-in-silks, cuz I need more DB/Labyrinth on my dash please and thank you.


	10. All You've Got to Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Further adventures of Sarah Williams, wannabe hero and presumptive murderess, aka The One Where Sarah Cannot Handle Her Shit (oh wait that’s all of them). In which a meeting is met, research is resought, choices are chosen and a ritual is performed. (couldn't make the last one work... :( )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HIYA FRIENDS IT’S BEEN A WHILE BOY HOWDY. The next chapter will not take almost a year, I promise. For a brief recap of the last few chapters, head on over to my tumblr ([@whenas-in-silks](http://whenas-in-silks.tumblr.com/post/167029497666/tithe-chap-10-deleted-scene)), where you can also find a deleted scene of Sarah and Ernie speculating about the Goblin King’s reproductive capabilities. It’s kinda sorta one of my favs and is 100% canon for this fic—I just couldn’t find a way to work it into the chapter. 
> 
> Thanks a bazillion to my wonderful beta, [syntheticaesthetic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syntheticaesthetic), and also to S, for sitting still and respectfully silent while I read out scene revision after scene revision and talked out the sticky bits at him. You are a champ.

**Chapter 10**

**All You’ve Got to Do**

* * *

****_Now your smile is spreading thin._  
_Seems you’re trying not to lose._  
_Since I’m not supposed to grin,_  
_All you’ve got to do is win._

“Win,” David Bowie

* * *

It’s the dawn that wakes her. Sarah opens her eyes onto dazzling blindness. Disoriented, she turns to bury her face in the pillow, but the size and texture is wrong. Her sheets are missing and her back aches in unaccustomed places. This isn’t her bed. What—?

She jerks upright as a sense of panicked urgency slams into her. There’s something she needs to—she’s made some kind of a mistake, a terrible mistake, and—danger and desperation and time, there’s no _time_ — She gasps, pressing her hands to her eyes to block out the light, raking through the tangled mass of memory and association.

Panic subsides as her jumbled thoughts resolve themselves, the overwhelming urgency fading into a more manageable insistence. Sarah presses a hand to her chest. She’s got a hell of a lot to do and not that much time to do it in, but she probably still has time for a shower.

The jitters stay with her all through the morning. She gives up shaving her legs after she nicks herself for the fourth time. She can stick to pants for today.

She’s still in the shower when Ernie calls, but she listens to the message over breakfast. Nina, he reports, is “totally in” and both of them are free after seven this evening if Sarah wants to meet up. Nina, he reports, hasn’t heard of the Goblin King _per se_ , but neither had she seemed particularly surprised that such a figure exists, nor that he has a long and checkered history with one of her boyfriend’s closest friends.

“You know how she is,” and even over the crackle of the phone Sarah can hear the smile in his voice, the mixture of pride and bemusement. “She just said something about there being no smoke without fire, and when I asked her what that meant, she said there were too many legends about soul-eaters and otherworldly baby-snatchers for them not to have _some_ basis in reality.”

Sarah listens to the message once through, then plays it again to be sure she hasn’t missed anything. Ernie’s words strike a discordant note, jarring against the hum of her anxiety. It’s not the content of the message that perturbs her, exactly. Nina makes a decent argument, unconventional as it might be, and really, if anyone was going to accept the whole outlandish story on faith it _would_ be Nina—Nina, who dabbles in palmistry and nineteenth century spiritualism and is hardly the poster child for rational skepticism. It’s just…

 _Surely_ it can’t be that easy. Ernie’s casual delivery, Nina’s ready acceptance—it all feels wrong somehow, out of place, like something out of the plot of a different story. It feels like _cheating_.

Which, Sarah tells herself firmly, is silly. The last thing she should be worrying about is potential allies trusting her too readily. Good god, is this how bad her life has gotten, that all it takes to throw her for a loop is for one measly thing to go _right_ for once?

With an assumed briskness, she returns Ernie’s call and confirms this evening’s meeting. A glance at the kitchen clock informs her she has eleven minutes before she needs to leave for work. The sense of urgency, which seems to have settled between her shoulder blades, tingles discontentedly.

“Oh, shut up,” she tells it, and heads to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

* * *

Eleven hours later, Sarah is sitting in the armchair in Ernie’s living room, Ernie and Nina side by side on the couch across from her. Ernie has a notebook open on his knee and an uncapped pen in his hand. One of his feet is jiggling, as if his eagerness is too great to be contained within his body. Nina—and Sarah takes a moment to remind herself that she was an EMT for three years, she’s dealt with far more stressful situations than this so _get it together, Williams_ —is a little more sedate, regarding Sarah with patient expectation, as though she were a student waiting for the start of a lecture on a mildly interesting subject.

Sarah clears her throat.

“So,” she says to Nina. “Ernie’s filled you in on everything?”

Nina glances at him for confirmation. “I think so, yeah.”

“Any, um, gaps I can fill for you? Questions you want me to answer?”

She tilts her head consideringly. “Nothing springs to mind.”

“Only I realize it’s kind of a lot to swallow,” Sarah says, and bites her tongue. Why is she pushing this?

“Not really.” Nina smiles disarmingly. “I mean, it comes down to a matter of trust, doesn’t it? I trust your and Ernie’s judgements and I trust you both not to lie to me, so…” She shrugs.

“Well.” Sarah ignores the wrench in her stomach. _(Alisse’s face, raw and rigid with betrayal—)_ “Good to hear.”

She sits up a little straighter in her chair, allows a note of authority to enter her voice. The urgency still stretched across her upper back and shoulders gives an approving throb.

“If Ernie’s filled you in, you’ll know that the ultimate goal here is to end the Tithe. That should let us fulfill the bargain without any further, um. Sacrifices.”

Ernie is nodding.

“For now, I think our main focus should be intelligence gathering.” The military term sounds good to her ears, weighty and competent. “I’ve— _we’ve_ got a two-month grace period, and I think the best thing we can do is to take that time to find out as much as we can about the Tithe and the Labyrinth and—” and the Goblin King “—and all of that. I mean, if this has all been going on as long as… well, it must have left _some_ traces, even if they’re only in myths and stories. After all,” she adds with a touch of wryness, as though she hadn’t already half-scripted this on the drive over, “this whole thing started because I took a fairy tale too seriously.”

“Or not seriously enough.”

Sarah opens her mouth, and then shuts it, momentarily derailed by this interruption. She glances over at Nina. “Um.”

“Sorry,” Nina says, “just thinking out loud.”

“Right.” Sarah gives her head a little shake. “Anyway, Ernie, I was hoping you’d be able to take the lead here.”

“Of course! Who better?” He smiles at her with cheerful egotism. “Actually, I was brainstorming some possible avenues for research. We should sit down together, identify key characteristics and narrative elements. I mean, just based on what you’ve told me so far—”

“That sounds great,” Sarah says firmly. “Let’s sort out the details later, okay?”

He nods, unoffended. “Sure thing.”

“Awesome.” Sarah shifts in her chair. “So that’s the main thing. At least… it’s the most easily achievable so I think it’s where we should focus our fire for now. The other thing— well, to be honest I’m not quite sure how to go about it.” She notices her fingers are pinching and pleating the fabric of her pants, and clasps her hands together. “There’s probably a limit on how much we can find out up here, and I don’t know how much opportunity for, um, unsupervised exploration I’m going to have when I’m down there, you know, _officially_.”

Ernie is leaning forward, gaze rapt. “You want to find a way back into the Labyrinth.”

Sarah nods. “A way there and back, yeah. Especially since—” She licks her lips. “I figure it’s a good idea to have an escape route. Just in case.”

He sucks in a breath.

A brief moment of silence. Then—

“Well,” says Nina brightly. “I think this is where I come in.”

Sarah blinks. “It is?”

“Of course!” And it’s like an invisible spot-light flicking on, because suddenly the focus of the room has shifted. Nina flashes her a thousand-watt smile. “I mean, isn’t that why you brought me in?”

“I, um. Well…” She glances helplessly at Ernie.

Because, of course, she hadn’t. Because of _course_ she hadn’t. Not once in the seven-odd months of their acquaintance has Nina done anything to suggest her interest in the supernatural is anything more than a hobby. Nina tells fortunes at fairs and hangs around in New Age bookshops and goes on the occasional weekend ghost-hunt. She doesn’t set herself up as a consultant for would-be heroes and help open doors to fairy-tale kingdoms!

…does she?

“Now, actual physical transportation,” Nina is saying, “ _that’s_ the tricky part.” She taps her lower lip thoughtfully. Her fingernails are swirling galaxies scattered with pin-prick stars. “I was always under the impression these sorts of encounters tend to be ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ kinds of things. Unless you know the location of any portals—stone circles, magic wardrobes, things like that…?”

“Um,” says Sarah, who is still stuck on ‘these sorts of encounters,’ casually flung in there as though people are popping between dimensions every day, “not really. At least, Jar— the Goblin King didn’t use anything like that when we went to the Labyrinth.”

Nina nods, absorbing this. “So it seems like connections between the realms are variable or manufactured, rather than fixed. Good to know.”

She leans back, folding her arms. One finger comes to rest pensively on her chin. There’s something contrived about the gesture, as if it had been practiced in a mirror for maximum effect, and Sarah feels a prick of irritation. She notes, with petty satisfaction, that the elaborate polish on Nina’s nails is starting to chip.

“Well, like I said, the physical aspect is the hard bit. To be honest, opening bespoke interdimensional portals is a little above my pay grade— _not_ that it can’t be done, mind, and I’ll definitely ask around, but you might be better off looking into that when you’re on the other side. For the purposes of reconnaissance, though, there are a few possibilities that come to mind. I’ll poke around, talk to a few people, see what I can rustle up, and get back to you when I’ve got something a little more concrete.”

She dusts off her hands, smiles in a conclusory kind of way, and leans over to peck Ernie on the cheek. Then she’s shouldering her bag and getting to her feet—

“Hang on a second,” Sarah objects, starting to rise as well.

Nina pauses, looking at her quizzically, and Sarah realizes, half-way out of her chair, how confrontational the gesture must seem, so now she has a choice, doesn’t she, between coming off as unnecessarily aggressive, and giving ground.

She hesitates a moment, then sits, trying to make it look as if she was just resettling herself in the chair. “I just thought maybe we should talk things over a little more.”

“How so?”

Sarah opens her mouth. She has a whole shoal of questions she’d like to discuss, darting around her mind like brightly colored fish and just as difficult to catch hold of, and there’s Nina standing there with her body angled towards the door and her head tilted inquiringly towards Sarah—

She settles for: “Well, for one, if you really think you can find a way back Underground, maybe that’s what we should focus on. Ernie can tackle the general stuff for now, and I can help you with, you know, whatever.”

Nina pulls a regretful face. “Honestly, I’ll be much faster on my own. Anyway,” she continues, before Sarah can think of a rebuttal, “wasn’t Ernie saying he needed your help with the research?”

“Actually, yeah,” Ernie says, a little apologetically. “You’re the only one with firsthand experience of what we’re looking for.”

Sarah bites her lip, searching for a tactful way to put her uncertainty into words—

Only it seems Nina might have guessed anyway, because she laughs and hoists her bag higher on her shoulder. “Have a little faith, Sarah!” Then, in more mollifying tones, “Like I said, I’ll keep you posted. You two hit the books and leave all the hocus-pocus to me—we’ll have you back to Narnia in no time.”

And before Sarah has even finished parsing this, Nina has blown them both kisses, mouthed an injunction to Ernie to “Call me!” and disappeared out the front door.

Sarah stares after her, trying to pinpoint where exactly she’d lost control of the conversation. She turns to Ernie, who gives her a half-smile and a helpless sort of shrug.

He waggles the notebook enticingly. “Shall we get started then?” He waggles the notebook enticingly.

Sarah glances at the clock. She’d been planning on going home, after, to sort out a few personal things—nested between her shoulders, the urgency begins to twitch and squirm— _important_ things, she admonishes, like whether she can afford to cut her hours at work, and when to give notice, and how to break her lease, and what to tell her parents.

She imagines going home to an apartment silent except for the whine of the refrigerator and the skittering of mice in the woodwork, empty, empty, _empty_ —

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “let’s go.”

* * *

So that’s how Sarah winds up playing research assistant to Ernie Ling. Which, as it turns out, _sucks_.

The initial interviews are bad enough. As it turns out, telling her story on (mostly) her own terms is one thing—sitting through a painstaking cross-examination is quite another. Like pulling teeth, the expression goes, and that’s just what it feels like, agonizing and protracted, leaving her raw and bloodied and sore. Sarah could grow to hate the straightforward, almost clinical manner in which Ernie goes about extracting every detail of her experience as she sits there and watches her most jealously guarded secrets transform into data points. Still, she recognizes it for tact, this front of professionalism. It’s worse by far when the mask slips and she sees the gleam of excitement in his eyes and feels resentment bubbling in her gut.

In that regard, the first night is the worst. By the second day, they’ve already gone over most of the actual narrative, so things are a little more relaxed.

He spends most of that afternoon quizzing her about minutiae, and as tedious as it is to try and remember the shape of the leaves on the trees in the central hedge-maze of the Labyrinth, at least it feels less like a vivisection.

What she fails to account for is the embarrassment factor. Take Ernie’s insistence that she provide a detailed physical description of every being she encountered in the Labyrinth. She makes it through Didymus and the others without much more than a pang—an old wound, that, though she can still feel its ache. But when it comes to describing their monarch…

Sarah chances a look at Ernie, and inwardly winces at the expectant look on his face. _Come on,_ she tells herself, _it’s not that bad. It’s like a police statement. Just describe the culprit_.

And it isn’t that bad, at least to start. Blond hair and blue eyes, she tells him. Pale skin. Is that even applicable?—yeah, okay, kind of European-ish. Tallish. Thin.

“And just to be clear, he looks entirely human? No fox tail, no tentacles, nothing like that?”

Sarah allows herself a cautious smile. “Not that I noticed. He, um. His eyes are funny. Uneven somehow. Not in height—color, maybe? And he’s got weird eyebrows. Like…” She sketches out their trajectory in the air over her own brow.

He nods absently. “And would you describe him as particularly good looking?”

She jumps. “Would I— _what_?”

“Objectively, I mean.”

“Jesus. I don’t know.”

Ernie looks at her over the rim of his glasses. “It could be important.”

Sarah ducks her head, rubbing her nose. She doesn’t need to call an image of him to mind to know the answer, but somehow there he is anyway, all grace and slender power— “Yeah,” she says, shortly. “Yeah, he’s good looking,” adding rebelliously, “If you’re into that whole thing. Kind of a frou-frou dresser though.”

At his prompting, she defines frou-frou—“Oh, you know. Frilly shirts and glitter, like that.” Only then he asks her for any other ‘distinctive characteristics’ and her face must do _something_ because he notices and Ernie just doesn’t let things _go_ he never _has_ until finally—

His eyes widen. Then he presses his lips together and turns his face away, the absolute _bastard_. “You’d, uh… you’d consider that a distinctive characteristic, would you?”

“He wears really tight pants, okay?” She can feel her face burning. “It’s kind of hard to miss!”

Ernie chokes on a poorly suppressed giggle, shoulders shaking. “How F-freudian.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“N-no, it’s, uh, useful information! I mean, a lot of fertility deities are traditionally depicted with—”

Sarah shoots to her feet so fast she almost overturns the coffee table. “I’m going for a smoke.”

“What? Oh, no. _Sarah_ , I didn’t— Come on, don’t be like that!”

And that’s just the second _day_.

Two weeks later and Sarah is seriously wondering how much more of this she can take.

It’s not that the research is going badly, exactly. At least, Ernie says it’s not, and he’s the one with the undergraduate thesis on contemporary American mythographies, so she figures he should know.

He warns her at the start of it all that any traces of the Tithe, the Labyrinth, or the Goblin King that have made their way into legend are likely to be distorted and corrupted, possibly beyond recognition. Well, okay, what he actually does is launch into a twenty-minute lecture on something that sounds more like a sneeze than a philosophy (Humerism? Hemerism?) but she’s pretty sure that’s what he’d meant. And she gets that, really she does, she’s not _stupid_ , and it’s not like she’d been expecting a smoking gun—at least, not much—but they’re a quarter of the way through their allotted time and what they’ve got at this point is several dozen “maybes,” a handful of “probably nots,” one “probably,” and not a single “no” or “yes.”

The one “probably” is the only reference to a “tithe” that doesn’t have to do with medieval religious taxation (Ernie insists those could still be relevant and forces her through a journal article and two monographs before he can be persuaded to drop this line of inquiry). They find it in an obscure Scottish ballad about a woman seduced by an otherworldly knight (Sarah carefully avoids Ernie’s eyes, only later realizing that this might have been an even greater give-away). The knight tells his lover that every seven years the “Queen o’ Fairies” pays “a tiend to hell,” and that he himself is to be the sacrifice. The appointed hour for the sacrifice?

“Ernie,” Sarah says, “It’s Halloween.”

She doesn’t have to say anything else. He’s just as capable of counting as she is. Six months from her bargain with the Goblin King…

“It’s not exact,” he says.

“It’s close enough.”

He looks at her a moment, then nods.

Her lip trembles. “Jesus,” she says. “‘Tiend to hell’? Seriously? _Jesus_.”

He reaches out and grabs her arm. “Look,” he says. “It doesn’t necessarily mean— I mean, it probably _is_ what it seems like, but that doesn’t mean the explanation is the right one, you know? Cultures have very specific worldviews. Europeans used to explain pretty much anything they didn’t understand with witchcraft or the devil, even stuff we now know to have a perfectly rational scientific explanation. And there are plenty of disparities. We can’t know anything for sure, one way or the other. Not until we have some corroboration.”

It’s the one time she’s actually glad to hear that argument. Still, she notices a few days later that the latest stack of books from the library include titles like _Discernment, Possession, and Exorcism in Medieval Europe_ and _The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology_. She doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t comment, but the knot at the base of her spine goes just that little bit tighter.

For the rest of it, though, it feels like they’re compiling an endless list of questions with not an answer in sight.

“We’re just gathering information for now,” he says, again and again. “Compiling data. We can worry about answers later—get enough information together and we’ll start to see the shape of things.”

“It’s not a goddamn Magic Eye!”

“Actually,” he says, thoughtfully, “that’s not a bad metaphor.”

Sarah doesn’t throw her book at his head, which she counts as a significant personal victory.

The real problem, when she comes down to it, is that she’s just not very _good_ at this. Oh, she did all right in school but she’d always had something specific to look for—names and dates and numbers and facts. This kind of…scholarly intuition, which leaps from subject to subject, tying together a Victorian poem, a German folktale, and a discredited Italian saint, is beyond her. Ernie starts by trying to make her an equal partner in the endeavor—goes to what Sarah’s fairly sure is considerable trouble to get her admitted to his university library.

“Biggest academic collection on the Eastern seaboard,” he informs her, a bit smugly. “Go crazy.”

Her fall from grace begins fifteen minutes later, when he discovers her lurking haplessly by the card catalogue.

“You do know all that’s been digitized, don’t you?” he asks, scandalized, and hauls her off to the mythology section.

By the end of the day, he’s given up on sending her to research independently and started her assigning articles; by the end of the week, he’s changed his instructions from “look for anything familiar,” to “take thorough notes on Chapter 7, pp 110-173.” Even these notes seem to be of dubious quality, since every now and then she catches him thumbing surreptiously through the index of a book she’s already read.

She could’ve borne it—the tedium, the indignity of being reduced to a glorified scribe on her own damn adventure—if only she thought she was being _useful_. As it is, the urgency on her back grows by the day. She pictures it as some kind of great cat prowling across her deltoids, restless and weighty and toothed.

Nina remains frustratingly elusive, her status updates as brief and unspecific as they are infrequent. She’s chasing down this or that lead, which occasionally seems to require some legwork—Ernie reports that she’s been to meet one contact in Brooklyn and another in Providence—but mostly seems to involve waiting for phone calls from unlikely-sounding places, like Pittsburgh, or Ottawa, or Beirut.

“She must be racking up a fortune in phone bills,” Sarah remarks to Ernie, who just shrugs.

Nina has also taken to communicating exclusively through Ernie. Sarah tries not to be too annoyed by this. It makes a certain sense, given that people in a relationship are bound to spend a lot of time together, but _still_. She tells herself it’s a group dynamics thing, the inevitable complications of working on a team, that what’s really bugging her is not Nina herself but the loss of control she represents, and all of that’s true, only…

It’s not that she doesn’t trust Nina, exactly. She—well, she _likes_ Nina, most of the time, and believes her to be generally well-intentioned, and she trusts Ernie, who trusts Nina, which is basically the same thing. It’s just that the Sarah only has Nina’s word for it that she’ll be able to deliver her promised “hocus pocus”, and frankly, this utter lack of transparency isn’t doing much for Sarah’s peace of mind or for her temper. It’s not like she’s ever seen Nina _do_ any magic, unless you count getting drunk at a party and reading Sarah’s palm in an embarrassingly loud and melodramatic voice, which, to be clear, Sarah doesn’t. And maybe it’s narrow-minded of her—because here she is, defeater of the Labyrinth and favorite stalkee of the sinister and twinkly Goblin King and talk about your glass houses—but she can’t help but think of Alisse back in her hospital room, rolling her eyes in almost comical disdain. _“I was expecting her to break out the healing crystals at any moment_. _”_ She can imagine with perfect clarity what Alisse would say if she found out how much was riding upon Nina’s magical expertise.

Then she stops imagining it, because imagining anything to do with Alisse hurts too much.

Alisse has been home for a little over a week and half, but she might as well still be in the hospital for all Sarah sees of her. Part of that is down to their differing job schedules, and Sarah’s, um, _extracurricular activities_ don’t help, but even on the rare occasions they’re both awake and in the apartment, they never seem to be in the same room for more than a few seconds. Sarah knows it’s deliberate. She just can’t figure out what to do about it.

She’d found a second carton of milk open in the fridge about a week back, and a second loaf of bread in the cupboard. They’d always shared food staples before, milk and bread and eggs and coffee. It’s without a doubt the stupidest thing Sarah has ever almost cried over.

All in all, it’s a bit of a shock when she comes home one evening to find Alisse waiting for her in the kitchen.

Sarah’s scrambled brains leap into action, struggling to string together a proper greeting— _Hi, how are you, what’s happening, what’s new, I hate this, I miss you, I’m sorry, hello—_

It’s been a long day, though, and Alisse beats her to the punch.

“There’s a message for you.” She jerks her head towards the answering machine.

“Oh. Um. Thanks.” A moment of silence as Sarah tries to pick this apart. Is it just an fyi, or is the message important? Does Alisse expect her to listen to it now, or should she wait until she leaves, or …

“It’s from the police.”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Sarah looks up, but Alisse’s face, normally so expressive, is unreadable as she continues.

“Claudine’s officially been reported missing. They want you to come in for an interview.”

Sarah swallows. It’s not like she hasn’t been expecting that, though she thought she’d have a little more time before— Too late she remembers the normal, human response to that statement.

“Alisse, I’m so sor—”

Alisse shakes her head, a sharp negation, and Sarah stops. She’s just wondering what to say next when Alisse speaks again.

“They had me in yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“‘Routine questioning.’ I mean, what’s the fucking point? I haven’t spoken to the woman in years, and I’ve spent the past few weeks in a fucking coma, which is _pretty unshakeable_ as far as alibis go, but it’s all, ‘Do you have any idea where she might have gone?’ and ‘Did your mother have any enemies?’ Like, you mean apart from the entire 20th century?”

It’s the most like herself Alisse has sounded since their argument, but there’s something strangely probing in her manner, as if she’s feeling around for a particular response.

“Alisse… That stuff I said in the hospital room, with Ernie—”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Alisse’s face transforms. “Did I tell the police about your loony little fairy tale fantasy, you mean? No, and I wouldn’t either, if I was you. Cops aren’t too big on people fucking them around.”

There’s such palpable disgust on her face, in her voice, that Sarah almost quails, but she pushes on: “No, I mean, that whole thing… It was stupid. It was me being stupid.”

It’s the truest thing she dares to say.

“You think?” There’s anger in Alisse’s voice now, and Sarah latches on to it, because anger is better, anything is better than this insurmountable distance. But a moment later, Alisse seems to deflate. “Why, though? That’s the thing I don’t understand. What were you trying to _do_?”

“I was being _stupid_ ,” Sarah says again, almost pleading, but it’s no good: Alisse has never been the type to accept half-assed martyrdom in the place of explanations.

“That’s not an answer.”

“I was—” Sarah closes her mouth, opens it again, searching for anything she can say, any lie she can tell to fix this, _fix_ this.

Alisse watches her struggle for a moment or two, then jerks her face aside, pushes past her towards the kitchen door.

“I can’t. I can’t deal with this. I’ve got too much—”

“Alisse…”

Alisse stops short in the doorway. “I can’t,” she says, simply. “It’s too much.”

Then she’s gone.

* * *

The police interview sucks exactly as much as Sarah had expected. She walks out of the station feeling ground down and unclean. She can feel her guilt like a layer of dirt lying just beneath her skin, and even though she’d known they couldn’t have anything on her, there’d been something in the officer’s expression that made Sarah wonder if the officer could somehow smell the culpability on her. What would guilt even smell like? Something damp, probably, and moldering. Surreptitiously, she sniffs her hair. Nothing but the vague floral scent of her conditioner. Still, maybe she should go home and shower anyway—take a little while to unwind.

But somehow, when it comes time to take the turning for home, she keeps driving. There’s a squirming sort of restlessness upon her, buzzing from her head down to the tips of her fingers. On her back, the urgency is on the move, stalking and creeping.

She pulls up outside Ernie’s building and parks the car. He answers on the second ring of the doorbell.

“Oh, hey! Wasn’t expecting you so soon.” There’s something odd about his voice.

“What?” she says, walking past him into the apartment. “Expecting them to stuff me in a cell and throw away the key?”

“I mean, no, obviously…”

“What’s going on?” Nina emerges through the bedroom doorway. Sarah glances from her to Ernie’s flushed cheeks and rumpled hair, and decides she doesn’t care. “Who’s getting stuffed in a cell?”

“No one,” Ernie says, shutting the door. “Sarah got called in for questioning.”

Nina’s eyebrows shoot up. “About…?” Then, as he nods, “How’d it go?”

The three of them are standing in narrow the hallway outside Ernie’s bedroom, clumped together— _like a blood clot_ , Sarah thinks.

“I gave a full confession and the nice men in white coats will be here to take me away any minute. How do you _think_ it went?”

For some reason, no one seems inclined to offer their opinion.

Sarah sighs. “It was fine. I told the truth, right up until I didn’t.” She focuses her attention on Nina. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” She leans against the wall, a casual gesture which has the convenient effect of blocking off access to the door. “Been keeping busy?”

Ernie shifts uncomfortably.

Nina smiles, a smile full of secrets and self-satisfaction. “Oh yes,” she says. “In fact, I come bearing glad tidings.”

In the moment it takes her to process this, Ernie turns to his girlfriend. “You never said anything to me!”

“Didn’t want to spoil the reveal.”

“You mean…?” Sarah can barely bring herself to verbalize the possibility. It suddenly seems too incredible for words.

Nina nods.

“Really?”

Her voice comes out high and breathless, almost like a child’s, but she can’t bring herself to care.

Nina tsks and shakes her head in reproof. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

And Sarah—

 _Sarah_ —

It’s like the first trickle of water down a parched throat, the sweet and sudden shock of life. She’s dimly aware of Ernie herding her into the living room as Nina explains that Sarah won’t be traveling physically, at least not yet—“It’s not so much transportation as trans-dimensional astral projection”—as if that _mattered_ , as if anything mattered except for the fact that she’s finally in motion. Nina says a lot of other things too, about “etheric travel” and “psychotopic harmonies,” but Sarah only lends her half an ear. All her doubts, all her cares and anxieties seem to shrink away before this moment of blazing possibility. It swells behind her ribs, a bright bubble of warmth and promise.

Then Nina explains exactly what the ritual requires, and the bubble pops.

“No.”

“Sarah…”

“No way. We’re not doing it in Alisse’s apartment.”

“It’s your apartment too.”

“ _No_.”

“I realize it’s not ideal,” Nina says, glancing at Ernie, “but it has to be somewhere your spirit recognizes as home.”

“‘Somewhere my—’ The lease is up in July! The only thing my spirit ‘recognizes’ is that it was the only affordable place on the market last summer that wasn’t crawling with roaches!”

“ _Sarah_.” Nina’s tone closely echoes Irene’s ‘disappointed voice’ and Sarah wants to grab her by the shirt and shake the condescension right out of her.

“Maybe there’s somewhere else that qualifies?” Ernie suggests. “What about your old house back in Robbinsville?”

“A childhood home would probably work,” Nina agrees, cautiously. “It’s a bit of a schlep, but it’s doable.”

They both turn to Sarah, who gives a short laugh.

“Fine,” she says, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “Great. Anyone up for some light B&E?” At their uncomprehending looks, she explains, “Dad and Irene moved two months ago. I haven’t seen the new place yet.”

Ernie looks uncertainly at Nina, who shakes her head.

“It wouldn’t work. The psychic resonances will have dissipated by now.”

“Oh, of course,” says Sarah. “The psychic resonances.”

She walks to the window, which is as far from the pair of them as she can get without actually leaving the room.

From behind her, she hears Ernie ask, low-voiced, “There’s really nowhere else we can do it?”

“Not if we want it to work.”

“In that case…”

“In that case, nothing,” Sarah interjects. “We do it some other way.”

“ _Sarah_ ,” Nina says again.

Sarah whirls around, jabbing a finger at her. “We’ve only got your word any of this will work in the first place!”

Nina stiffens, then slowly arches a brow. Her voice is all poison and honey. “Well, if that’s not enough for you, feel free to go with one of your numerous back-up plans.”

Sarah bites her tongue on a “fuck you” and turns back to the windows. A light rain has begun to fall, misting the glass of the windowpane. She wants to reach out, press her hand against the glass, cool and solid before her, but Sshe holds herself still, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides. She feels all sharp edges, a jagged mess of peaks and points; any movement risks a wound.

After a few moments, she hears someone approaching her, feet light on the carpeted floor.

“Hey,” Ernie says cautiously.

“I can’t do it,” she says, voice low. “I can’t.” Not in Alisse’s home. It would be another betrayal.

“I understand where you’re coming from.”

 _If you understood, you wouldn’t be asking me to do this_.

“But we can be smart about this. Do it when she’s at work, clean everything up before she got back. She wouldn’t have to know.”

Sarah smiles, without mirth. “What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her?”

“You know,” he says, a hint of his old teasing back in his voice, “just because you say it all sarcastic doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

 _He’s right_ , part of her thinks. _Who would it hurt?_

 _Me_.

_Yes. But you’re expendable._

More footsteps behind her. She turns to see Nina with her jacket slung over her arm.

“It’s your call, of course,” she says. Sarah wonders why it doesn’t sound like a concession. And then: “You have to decide what’s more important.”

The words hit her like a pile-driver. God. _God_.

“Think about it,” Nina says, not unkindly, and leaves the room.

Sarah drives home in a daze. The wheels of her car find little traction on the damp asphalt, and as she almost skids into the car in front of her when she pulls up short at a stoplight. A chorus of klaxons tells her what her fellow motorists think of her driving skills. She waits patiently for the light to turn, then puts her foot on the gas.

The city looks different in the rain, dreamlike, only half real. Sarah feels half real herself. When had this become her life, this endless series of impossible choices?

Except, of course, that they aren’t impossible. She already knows what she’s going to tell Nina.

She just wants to pretend, for a little while, that she doesn’t.

* * *

She runs into Alisse as she enters the apartment, quite literally, upsetting the basket of laundry Alisse is carrying.

“It’s fine,” Alisse insists as Sarah helps gather her scattered clothes. “No, seriously—”

When everything is back in place, they stand for a moment looking at each other. Sarah feels a sharp pang of something like hunger, only sadder. Longing, maybe.

“Well,” she says, “I’ll just let you—”

“Actually,” Alisse says, talking over her, “I’m glad I ran into you.”

And here it is, proof positive that the heart is an idiot, and there’s no emotion stupider than hope. Sarah’s dumb, stupid heart is suddenly pounding with it, insistent against the bars of her ribcage.

“I thought about leaving a note but it seemed kind of…” Alisse shrugs, a spasmodic twitch of the shoulders. “Anyway, I’m going to be staying with a friend for a bit. Her roommate’s out of town and I thought, well…”

“Oh.” All the air has been sucked out of the room. Alisse’s words echo impossibly through the vacuum. “Um, yeah, right. Okay. Great.”

“I’ll still be paying rent and shit,” Alisse hastens to assure her. “I just… won’t be around. For a little while.”

Sarah wants to ask how long a little while is, but she knows better than that. “And if I need to contact you?”

“Oh, uh…”

“For, you know, apartment things.”

“Right. Well, you can always call me at work but… I guess I can leave you her number.”

“That’d be… yeah, thanks.”

They stand there for a moment, skittish and awkward as two foals.

Alisse makes a move towards the hallway and her bedroom. “Anyway, I’d better—”

Sarah takes an involuntary step forward. “Alisse, I—”

Alisse shakes her head, looking suddenly very, very tired. “Don’t do this, Sarah. Not now.”

Sarah drops her gaze, biting back the words massing on her lips. She nods once—in understanding, in acquiescence—then turns and heads into the kitchen so Alisse won’t have to pass her on the way out. Some time later, she hears the front door close.

She’s thinking about what Nina had said. _The place your spirit recognizes as its home_. She breathes out a laugh, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

Then she gets up and goes to the phone.

She dials the number and waits. After four rings, there’s a click.

“Hello? Nina Shapiro speaking.”

“Hey, it’s Sarah. Looks like I’ve actually got the place to myself for a little while, so we can do this, you know, pretty much whenever.”

“How long is ‘a little while’?”

Sarah wraps the telephone cord round and around her middle finger until the finger is fat with it, other digits splayed uncomfortably to make room. “Um. A week, maybe? Maybe more, I’m not quite sure.”

And she’s praying that Nina’s not going to ask her anything more, because she’s the last person in the world Sarah wants to talk to about this.

A brief silence on the other end. Then: “I can be ready by Sunday.”

* * *

Two days later, Sarah opens the front door to find Nina, lashes crusted in mascara, hair glowing like a coal in the sunlight. She is, inexplicably, wearing what looks like a kaftan over cut-off shorts and leggings. The leggings are black. They have skulls on them.

Sarah feels a throb of guilt at the sight of her—her very presence, bringing with it all that unrestrained _Nina_ -ness, seems like treachery in itself. But Nina is already greeting her and leaning forward to press a kiss to each of Sarah’s cheeks. She pulls back.

“Ready?”

“Born ready.”

Nina laughs and sails past her into the stairwell.

“Top floor,” Sarah tells her. “Door’s open.”

She steps back to make way for Ernie, who is staggering slightly under the weight of a cardboard packing box.

“Let me take that.”

“Nah, it’s good. Just need a minute,” he says, propping himself against the wall.

Peering into the box, Sarah sees an enormous bronze censer, a few boxes of tealights (one still bears a sticker listing its price as $1.99 On Clearance), assorted sandwich bags and Tupperware containers, and a large packet of…

“Cashews?”

Nina’s voice comes floating down the stairwell. “Rituals always make me snacky. Do you mind if I use your phone?”

“It’s in the kitchen,” Sarah calls back. She turns to Ernie, mouthing, _snacky_?

He shrugs, resettling the box in his arms. “You just kind of go with it.”

Between the two of them, they wrangle the box up the two flights of stairs to the apartment and deposit it in the living room. Nina’s voice can be heard from the kitchen, although Sarah can’t make out any actual words.

“Should we…try and start setting up?” she asks Ernie with an uncertain glance towards the box.

“Start by clearing a space?”

They push the sofa and coffee table back against the walls.

“Rug too,” Nina says from the doorway, making Sarah jump a little. She shakes a packet of something out into one hand, and turns to Sarah. “Nuts?”

“Um,” Sarah says, and receives a fistful of cashews for her pains.

“Nice place,” Nina remarks. “Cosy.”

“Thanks.” Sarah stares uncertainly down at the nuts in her hand.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of P. J. Harvey.”

She looks over to see Nina examining a poster of a strikingly pale woman in a red dress The woman is floating face-up in some indeterminate body of water. Her hair spreads out beneath her like ink, and her eyes are closed, as in pleasure, or death. Sarah has always found the image unsettling.

“That’s not mine,” she says, shortly, and kneels to help Ernie with the rug, stuffing the cashews into her back pocket and wiping her hand surreptiously on her thigh. It’s not like she’s wearing her nice jeans anyway.

“Williams isn’t too big on decorating,” Ernie remarks. “You should’ve seen her dorm room: it was like a monk’s cell. I’ve been in hotel rooms with more personality.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got better things to spend my money on.”

Nina merely frowns at the poster as though it has let her down in some way. “I suppose no one can be wrong all the time.” She turns back to them, brisk and businesslike. “Shall we get started?”

At Nina’s instruction, Sarah strips down to her tank top, tying her shirt around her waist, and sits cross-legged in the middle of the floor, while Nina sets about applying ointment to her face, chest, arms and shoulders with a pastry brush. The ointment—or ‘unguent,’ as Nina calls it—is thick, greasy, and pungent, and Sarah anticipates with an inward sigh the blocked pores to come. Her skin is generally pretty clear, but even it won’t be able to resist such extraordinary provocation.

“What’s in it?” Ernie asks, peering into the Tupperware container, a mixture of fascination and revulsion on his face. Nina must have been keeping it refrigerated, because the stuff has congealed to near-impenetrability.

“Goose fat,” Nina answers absently, and Sarah wrinkles her nose in agreement. “Rosemary. Lavender. Yarrow. _Damn_.” This as her hand slips, depositing a greasy lump on Sarah’s blue-jeaned thigh. “Hellebore. Other things. It should be machine washable,” she adds to Sarah.

“It’s cool.” If by some miracle this actually works, it’ll be worth spoiling a pair of old jeans.

Ernie opens his mouth, presumably to ask about the “other things”, but Sarah stops him with a minute shake of her head. On balance, she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to know.

“So,” she says, after a brief period of silence. “Do you do stuff like this often?”

“What, send people on black ops missions to fairytale kingdoms? That’s a new one on me, I admit.”

Ernie snorts.

“I meant more, uh, broadly. The magic… stuff.”

“I’m not a complete novice, no,” Nina says, sounding amused. “Worried?”

“No,” Sarah says. “It’s just, I never— I mean, I knew you were into all this stuff, but I didn’t realize you, uh…”

“I’m aware,” Nina says, dryly. She lays down the brush and sits back a little, looking Sarah in the eye. “I know this is all a little weird to you, but I need you to relax. Stop trying to psych yourself out. You’ve come too far for that.”

“I’m not…” Sarah trails off. She hadn’t thought she _was_ psyching herself out, but since Nina mentioned it… There’s a buzzing anticipation that seems to have settled under her skin. Could that be nerves?

“You’re in zero danger here. Your soul is tied to your body and your body is bound to your home. That’s why we had to do the ritual in your apartment. If anything goes wrong, the ritual just won’t work. Nothing to worry about.”

“I wasn’t,” Sarah lies. “Go ahead,” she adds as Nina brandishes the brush in an interrogatory fashion, splattering Sarah and the carpet with droplets of grease. Nina resumes her application.

“Now remember,” she says, “once you feel the spell start to take effect, all you need to do is relax and let it happen. Your spirit knows the way, even if your brain has forgotten it.”

Sarah nods, as if this makes perfectly good sense.

“Once cast, the spell should last until the last candle burns out, so you’ll have four or five hours to explore. If for any reason you need to leave before then, just concentrate on your body. You’ll be able to feel some kind of connection, even in spirit form, and if you need to you can follow that back. Got it?”

“Got it.”

It’s not _really_ a lie, Sarah tells herself. This is at least the fourth time Nina’s been through all of this—Sarah’s probably understood as much of it as she can without experiencing it firsthand. Anyway, she’s always been good at thinking on her feet.

“—and there we go!”

Sarah blinks, only vaguely aware that Nina has been talking all this time. It takes a moment to process her last words. “Oh. You mean—?”

“Consider yourself duly anointed. Pass me that roll of paper towels? No, not _you_ , Sarah, honestly, I just spent all that time putting the stuff _on_ you.”

Having wiped any stray unguent from her hands, Nina proceeds to chalk a circle on the carpet, about four feet in diameter with Sarah at its center.

“You’re sure that’ll come off?” Sarah asks, shifting position slightly. The last thing she wants is for Alisse to come home to the remnants of a magic circle on their living room carpet. Then she remembers Alisse won’t be coming home any time soon.

“In about five seconds with a wet cloth,” Nina is saying, inscribing a square within the circle. “Now _relax_.”

At each corner of the square, she places a candle. “One for each of the four corners of the globe,” adding with a grin as Sarah and Ernie exchange looks, “You don’t change a winning formula.”

In spite of her not-quite-nerves, Sarah breathes out a laugh. The feeling has expanded, the buzzing beneath her skin joined by a flutter in her stomach, a giddy lightness in her chest.

 _I’m going back_ , she thinks, experimentally, and is unprepared for the rush of excitement, the way it sets her extremities tingling with possibility.

 _I’m going back_ , she thinks again, more confidently, and for the first time, she finds she actually believes it.

Suddenly uncomfortable, she pushes back against the feeling—she needs to stay focused, stay skeptical, needs to go into this with a clear head. It’s no good. The thought bubbles up once more like water from a mountain spring.

 _I’m going_ _ back _ _._

The urgency on her back digs in its claws, lashes its tail, and purrs.

Ernie is wrestling with the censer—the thing really is incredibly unwieldy—finally managing to deposit it in front of Sarah in the half-moon formed between circle and square.

“Make sure it’s completely inside the lines,” Nina instructs. She’s kneeling on the edge of the room with half a dozen herb-filled sandwich bags open in front of her, snatching pinches from each apparently at random and tossing them into an open Tupperware container. “And be careful not to smudge the chalk!” She returns to work, muttering under her breath as she does so. Sarah’s not sure whether it’s some kind of incantation, or just a recipe.

“You couldn’t have brought something smaller?” Ernie complains, rotating the censer with some difficulty.

“It’s an antique,” Nina informs him haughtily.

“Yeah, well, after hauling it up two flights of stairs I’m starting to feel like an antique myself.”

“What you are,” she says, coming up behind him, “is in my way. Shoo.” She reinforces the command with a nudge of her foot.

As he moves obligingly aside, she tips the mix of herbs into the censer, lights it, and steps back. Sarah catches a whiff of the incense—a thick, complex odor, spicy and sweet, with a strong piney undercurrent. She takes a deeper breath, trying to pick apart the different components.

“That’s right,” Nina says, bestowing upon her an approving smile. “Deep breaths. You’re doing a fantastic job.”

 _Do I get a gold star?_ Sarah thinks, but without real irritation. For something so complicated, the incense is oddly soothing.

“Hang on, shouldn’t we disable the smoke detector first?” Ernie asks.

“Oh no,” says Nina blithely, kneeling to light each of the four candles in turn. “The smoke’s only for Sarah.”

Ernie blinks, owlish in his glasses. Sarah blinks too. Her eyelids feel curiously heavy, furling and unfurling like roman blinds.

“Um,” he says, “that’s not how smoke works.”

“That’s how _this_ smoke works,” Nina says definitely.

Sarah opens her mouth to tell them that the smoke detector in the living room has already _been_ disabled, but there’s something wrong with her lips. Her tongue lolls strange and unwieldy in her mouth.

“Nina,” she manages, the sound coming out slurred and just barely recognizable. _Eee-uh_.

Nina’s eyes rake over her. Then she rocks back on her heels, looking pleased. “Oh good, it’s working! How are you feeling? Still relaxed? Don’t try to speak, just nod or shake your head.”

With some effort, Sarah nods.

“Excellent.”

Ernie glances from one to the other. It’s hard to make out the details of his expression, but there’s a note of worry in his voice. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s just the smoke. I’m told it can have an anesthetizing effect, at least at first.”

“But there _isn’t_ any—”

“I told you, it’s just for Sarah. Now _hush_.”

Nina begins to chant. The words are unfamiliar, with a lilting cadence and an undulating rhythm.

Sarah takes a deep breath, lets it out, takes another. Things are going fuzzy, her world fading at the margins. With each breath, it contracts further. She lets her eyes fall shut. Somewhere far away and growing farther by the minute, she can still hear Nina’s voice, its rolling, alien musicality.

Inhale.

Exhale.

She is shrinking in upon herself, past walls of skin and muscle and bone. The bars of her ribcage expand and contract, drawing her inward like air to the lungs. How had she never realized how _loud_ her body is, the way her bones creak with every tiny movement, the wet thunder of her pulse?

Inward she goes and further inward, the clamor of her body crescendoing into indistinction. Senses begin to blur, sound and scent swelling in her like a tide. It eddies around her, bearing her upwards on its crest.

Even after the tide retreats, the feeling of buoyancy remains. Inside her skull she is lighter than air, a helium balloon gently nudging a roof of bone.

She doesn’t notice the precise moment she leaves her body, only gradually becomes aware that she is floating somewhere above it, caught in the pull of some strange gravity. Nina had said—and oddly, the thoughts come more clearly now, cool and bright as crystal—Nina had said there would be some sort of connection, a line leading back to her body. She concentrates. Yes, there’s something, long and ropy, like a psychic umbilical cord. As she focuses on it, something brushes across her mind: not so much scent as the memory of it. She reaches out for more connections and finds a flutter of voices, a ripple of warmth, a quaver of light—the barest echoes of physicality. Holding each connection in her mind she _tugs_ , feeling a distant jolt of response.

For one, brief and disjointed moment, sense returns—sight, scent, sound, taste, and touch. Then she is drifting once more into emptiness.

She feels again for the connections, but it’s as if she’s attached to her body with putty and chewing gum. Already the ties are thinner and weaker than before, spooling out thin and threadlike at the merest touch of thought. Even as she withdraws, she can feel the stretch.

Warmth is stealing over her. She sinks into it, the lines to her body pulling finer and finer as she drifts towards some great void—a nothing-plane of the mind.

Abruptly, the movement stops. Sarah can feel herself floating in some indescribable ether, tethered to her body like a balloon. She reaches out for the connections, but the ties are beginning to lose their ductility. She brushes against one and her mind is filled with voices, brought to her as if on a telephone wire.

“— _fuck is going on?”_

“ _Can we just—”_

“ _Sarah?_ _Sarah_ _?”_

“ _Don’t let her—”_

“— _go of me!”_

“ _Listen to me, please, it’s—_ _oof_ _—”_

“ _Ernie!”_

“— _wrong with her? What have you—”_

“ _I’m okay, I’m—”_

“ _Sarah? Can you hear me? Sarah?_ _Sarah_ _!”_

With every moment that passes, more of the warmth retreats, the lines to her body growing rigid and brittle. She feels the first stirrings of panic. One of the strands throbs in tandem with the quickening beat of her faraway heart. She needs to act, and act quickly. With an enormous effort of concentration she reaches out, wrapping her thoughts around the threads, and _yanks_ —

Something snaps, jarringly, like a guitar spring breaking, and for the barest instant she feels in a feeling beyond sensation the sting of the recoil, before the world and everything in it falls shuddering into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing sketchier than someone telling you something is completely 100% safe. Like, people are killed in freak dishwashing accidents. And if you’re in a story you gotta be EXTRA careful, cuz, ya know, situational irony innit. In the immortal words of The Lonely Island: “Don’t be dumb,/ Don't trust anyone,/ 'Cause you only live once.” YOLO, my dudes. YOLO.
> 
> The theory Ernie mentions is called “euhemerism,” named after the Greek philosopher Euhemerus, who proposed that the gods were once mortal kings whose stories had been inflated and corrupted in some sort of mytho-historical game of telephone (I paraphrase). Isn’t it cool that there’s a name for it though?
> 
> In other news I AM SO FREAKING eXCiTE to leave these pesky OCs behind for a while! The next chapter is my favourite so far--time and past time to have a little FUN.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed (glossary, mewcowardlylion, meemalee, Annissa, 73880, Farisya, MsZia, PixelBamf, Nettie, junk, teacuptaako, N01fin, Naeha, K, Elywyngirlie, DoraTheExplora) or left kudos or dropped me a line over the past however-many-months—I know I haven’t been so great about replying but they all meant a ton. As always, I’d love to know if you’re about/still reading and what you think, or to hear from new readers. Also, any questions you have as the plot continues to thicken/twine about itself like the lovechild of the worm ouroboros and a paticularly tangly ball of yarn, send them my way, in comments or on tumblr—I will answer them where I can without spoilers, and continue to sow chaos and confusion where I cannot, what fun! 
> 
> Songs:  
> “Win,” by David Bowie.  
> “Under Pressure,” by Queen feat. David Bowie.  
> “Season of the Witch,” by Donovan.
> 
> (oh and here's the image that's the poster on Sarah's wall. "is that really relevant?" you, reasonably, ask. yes, yes it kind of is, I'm sorry, I honestly have very little control at this point.)  
> 


	11. Back to the Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questionable heroine makes questionable decisions; overly-descriptive author over describes them. Now with potentially psychotic sentient hedge maze!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy second night of Chanukah! <3
> 
> This one's mostly just a bit of fun, guys. Special thanks to S for being my sounding board/the person who sat there and let me drunkenly read rough drafts at him. What a mensch.

** Chapter 11 **

**Back to the Garden**

* * *

_We are stardust, we are golden,_  
_we are caught in the devil’s bargain,_  
 _and we’ve got to get ourselves_  
 _back to the garden._

“Woodstock,” Joni Mitchell via CSNY.

* * *

Darkness, and the sensation of falling. Then—there is no landing, but the feeling of movement ceases, replaced by a cool and creeping damp. Sarah opens her eyes.

One hand flies to her mouth, too late to stop the laugh from escaping. It skims over a flat expanse of water, skipping from wall to wall until the entire chamber resounds her wonder and disbelief.

She scrambles to her feet. She’s standing on a platform in the middle of some sort of cistern or underground lake. The roughness of the walls and ceiling suggest the latter, but the platform on which she stands is smooth and perfectly square—definitely not natural. It’s also submerged in about an inch and a half of water, which explains the damp.

Another laugh is swelling in her chest. She clamps her hand more firmly against her mouth, but she can’t suppress the grin which threatens to split her face at the seams. It worked. It actually _worked_.

A fissure in the stone overhead lets through a jagged slice of light. Sarah steps closer, craning her head for a glimpse of the world outside. As she moves, her foot slips and she goes down hard. The walls return her yelp of surprise as her ass hits stone, water spraying in all directions.

Gingerly, she pushes herself upright once more, rubbing her tailbone, which is already promising a massive bruise, and—

She stills as realization hits her.

—and that’s _really_ not supposed to happen, is it.

She squats down on her haunches, looking down at the palm of the hand with which she’d caught herself, at the specks of grit which cling to it. The lake ripples as she dips her hand into the water and again as she withdraws it, clean.

Well, shit.

Sarah rubs her nose, her damp hand shockingly cool against her skin. Okay. Either she’s completely misunderstood what Nina had meant about spirit-walking—which is _possible_ , except—

No. Phantom limb is one thing. Phantom hands, face, butt, and feet—she flexes her toes inside her sneakers, wincing at the squelch—is another thing entirely.

She straightens again. So. Something somewhere has plainly gone awry. Just _how_ awry remains to be seen. Could something have happened with the ritual? She casts her mind back, but the last thing she can remember clearly is Nina lighting the censer. Everything after that gets a little fuzzy.

If she really concentrates she can get snatches of… something. A sense of buoyancy, and one of distance. She screws her eyes shut, but it’s no good. Even if she can get past the ache of her tailbone there’s the wet denim clinging maddeningly to her thighs, the water permeating her shoes, the goosebumps creeping slowly up her arms.

She opens her eyes. Time to think things through. The ritual has clearly taken her _somewhere_. So: does she take the emergency out Nina had described? Or does she take advantage of the time the spell has given her?

The first option—Sarah ignores the way her gut clenches at the thought—is maybe the most sensible. There are a lot of unknown variables here—an awfully high potential for danger. The smart thing to do would be to report back, tell Nina what happened, and let her adjust accordingly.

On the other hand…

Well, for starters, she doesn’t even know where the spell has taken her. It _could_ be the Labyrinth, but it just as easily could be… somewhere else. If it’s not the Labyrinth, of course, then she’ll go back straightaway. And if it _is_ the Labyrinth…

She realizes she’s holding her breath and lets it out in a rush. If it _is_ the Labyrinth, she’s still got four or five hours to explore before the spell pulls her back, hasn’t she? What a godawful waste, after all these weeks of labor, to cut and run just because things haven’t gone perfectly according to plan. And if worst comes to worst and things have gone so totally fubar that—that her return ticket is no longer valid, let’s say—surely that’s just as true now as it will be five hours from now. She’d already been planning to find an escape route. She might just… have a little extra incentive.

A small part of her wonders why she isn’t more freaked out about all this. She shoves the thought aside.

Either way, no point wasting time arguing with herself. Not—she shivers—when there’s a whole world waiting.

She rubs hard at her collarbone, just above where her heart is moving in an entirely unbusiness-like flutter, and begins her hunt for the exit.

Bright as it is, the light from overhead isn’t quite enough to illuminate the deepest recesses of the cave. In these pockets of shadow, Sarah is reduced to feeling her way along the wall, thigh-deep in chilly water. The floor is mostly smooth, making the occasional ridge or pitfall all the more dangerous. One unexpected ridge nearly oversets her, sending her pitching forwards only to catch herself against the side of the cave.

A rasp of stone. Beneath her hands, the wall shifts.

Sarah lurches backwards, nearly tripping over the same obstacle. There’s a moment of undignified flailing before she manages to right herself. Gingerly, she prods across the floor with her foot.

The source of her upset is about half a foot in height, even-surfaced and roughly rectangular, almost like… Yes, okay, like a step.

Carefully, she mounts the step and presses the wall once more. There’s a moment of resistance and then, with a grating, ponderous groan, the wall swings out onto sunlight and a twenty-foot drop.

Sarah clutches at the side of the newly made opening, but it’s not the drop that has her heart racing. It’s the intricate landscape that stretches below her, a sinuous tangle of lines painted in varying shades of leaf-green, clay-red, and stony grey.

Sarah feels herself split in two, like an image shifting out of focus. Half of her remains frozen, trapped in that instant of recognition like a fly in amber. The other half flings its arms around the side of the doorway and squeezes it tight as butterflies take wing in her stomach, a bright and giddy maelstrom.

She did it. She _did_ it. She’s _back_.

Gradually, her split selves resolve, unified by discomfort—the rough press of stone against her cheek, the way the slight breeze presses her sodden jeans back against her skin. She peels away from the wall, straightens the over-shirt tied about her waist, and puts back her shoulders. To business.

Now that she’s looking properly, she can make out narrow stone steps cut into the cliffside. There’s little cover, but a careful survey turns up no sign of life apart from a large (and strangely lopsided) bird circling lazily overhead. Sarah waits until it passes before picking her way down the mountainside and into the maze beyond.

She finds herself in a fractured-mirror of a formal garden. Towering hedges form long corridors, opening at intervals onto odd, asymmetrical clearings. Some contain miniature labyrinths of their own; others, patches of not-quite wilderness; still others, assorted fragments of slightly misshapen architecture.

She moves carefully at first, edging around corners, sneakered feet light upon the stones. But the more she walks, the clearer it is that the Labyrinth—or at least, this section of it—is deserted. No friendly worms, no talking masonry, no carnivorous fairies. Not even an insect in the bushes or a bird in the sky. The Labyrinth is austere in its repose, quiet, except for Sarah’s own footsteps and a teasing breeze that ruffles the leaves of the hedges and the wispy curls at the base of her skull.

Something else is prickling there, at the back of her neck. Not quite a sixth sense, but—just maybe—the lack of it. The feeling comes on her slowly, increasing by degrees. It’s a little like walking through an empty fairground, the lights all dimmed, tents flapping in the wind, hollow as bone. These empty corridors and lifeless galleries share some of the same echoing strangeness.  It’s… well, it’s a bit creepy, sure, but more than that, it’s _awkward_. The one presence in a landscape defined by absence—what could be more intrusive?

She rounds a slight curve and sees an opening at the end of the gallery—a pointed stone arch dense with greenery and speckled with yellow flowers. There’s something different about the style of the arch—an entry to a different part of the Labyrinth, maybe? Her pace increases along with her heart until she’s practically tripping over her own feet in her eagerness. But when she puts her head through, she sees only another long corridor of mixed stonework and shrubbery.

“Hello?” she calls out, cautious, testing.

The green walls of the Labyrinth return only silence.

 _Damn_.

Sarah knuckles her forehead, frustration kicking like a drum in her innards. She’d been so sure this archway would be the one! She rolls her shoulders, trying to dispel the tension growing there.

It’s just that she remembers so clearly how it had been that first time, the way the very world had seemed to twist itself into knots to thwart her—to aid her. Has the Labyrinth changed so much since then? Or has she—?

But no, she knows what the difference is. It must have been Jareth’s doing, before. He would have roused the Labyrinth, of course he would—would have wound it up and set it after her like those horrible cleaners of his. How many of the troubles she’d encountered along the way had he orchestrated? How many friends—

The thought curdles like sour milk.

At least this time, whatever she finds—it’s _hers_. Surely that’s better. To have less, but to know it to be real?

Sarah snorts, and shakes her head. Who does she think she’s kidding? She’d take just about anything right now, real or not, friendly or not, as long as it was _alive_. The cleaners, the headless monsters in the swamp—she’d practically welcome the King himself. At least then she’d have something to react to. At least then she’d have something to _fight_.

Her limbs twitch at the thought, a prickly jolt of restless longing. She puts out a hand to steady herself against the flowery archway, and snatches it back with a curse—there are thorns among the flowers. She puts her mouth to the point of pain and tastes the salt and copper tang of blood.

A breeze skims the walls of the corridor. The light from overhead grows warm, shading to gold where it strikes the stone of the path before her, as if a cloud had moved from in front of the sun.

She takes a step forward, then, at the cry of a bird, ducks back beneath the shelter of the arch. A shadow skims across the stones. A few moments later, the cry comes again, more distant now. She counts her heartbeats. When she reaches thirty, she resumes walking.

The goblin patrol finds her not five minutes later.

She hears them before she sees them—they’re not exactly keeping a low profile, between the stamps and the shouting and jangling of armor—and immediately doubles back, moving as quickly and quietly as she can. Around this corner, down the left-hand passage and—there, yes, the corridor widens to make space for a small wooded pond. Sarah ducks beneath branches, wincing at the crackle of twigs beneath her feet, and hurls herself behind a large bush at the water’s edge. Her heart is threatening to beat itself right out of her chest. She’d half given up hope on coming across anyone at all, and now, what sounds like an armed patrol? You’d think she’d have learned by now, she thinks, biting her lip against the bone-deep hum of anticipation, to be careful what she wished for.

She’s only just managed to catch her breath when she hears once more the clatter of armored boots, overlain with a slightly off-beat cadence.

“Left! Right! Left, right, left!”

Sarah is a closed circuit, body abuzz with tension as the footsteps draw nearer, rattling and clanking.

“Right! Left! Right, right, left! Left! Left! Left, left, left!” Then, urgently: “Right! Right! Right, you fuckers, righ—”

A muffled crash, such as might be made by one or more armored figures colliding with a hedge.

Sarah is frozen. She can feel the expression on her face—the sort of expression her mother used to warn her might stick. Just— _what?_

For the next few minutes, she is treated to a symphony of moans, curses, and occasional clanking as she crouches unmoving behind her bush, torn between hilarity and horror. She’d been so careful, and this— _this_ is what she’s been afraid of?

Not that she didn’t have reason—at the very least, she can’t risk them reporting her to Jareth. But—god, the indignity of it! Couldn’t they at least have the decency to be menacing?

As if in answer to her question, the sound of marching begins again, followed a few beats later by the chanting, transformed now into a call and response.

_“Met my lady ‘mong the stones!”_

A ragged chorus of voices return the line: “Met my lady ‘mong the stones!”

_“Ate me up and crunched me bones!”_

Sarah blinks. Surely she can’t have heard right—

“Ate me up and crunched me bones!”

It’s just then that the patrol comes into view: half a dozen figures in ill-fitting armor moving in a brisk military shuffle. Yet somehow, they don’t seem so comical anymore. Maybe it’s the spikes on their helms and shoulders, or the bullish deliberation of their walk. One of them turns its head in her direction and she stifles a gasp. No face there, human or goblin—just a sheet of brownish metal with holes for the eyes, a slit down the middle, and shadows beneath. The head turns away again, spear-butt thumping the ground in time to the tuneless song.

_Wolfie’s starving under hill  
After lady’s et her fill!_

Then, thankfully, they’re passing without a second at the copse where Sarah is hidden. She can still hear the echoes of their grisly little ditty winding down the halls of the Labyrinth behind them.

_Kings an’ peasants, beggars, priests,  
All equals is at lady’s feast,_

_For when the winds begin to blow,  
Down the gullet they shall go!_

Sarah waits until long after their voices have died away before she emerges from her hiding place. The afternoon seems different, somehow, cooler, sharper edged, as if the goblins had taken something away with them as they passed. Even the tenor of the silence has changed. She wonders, for the first time, if she is truly alone.

“Hello?”

Her voice cracks when she speaks, as if from disuse. How long has she been walking? She’d thought not even an hour.

There is no direct answer, but she swears she can feel something, some kind of tension, or—or not tension, exactly—something more like _attention._ The very air seems charged with it, still as a caught breath.

“Hello?” she says again, louder this time. The attention—though surely it must be her imagination—seems to sharpen, an eyeless gaze that sets the hairs on her arms to rising.

She begins to back out of the woods. She’s just reached the edge of the copse when a sudden cry and the beating of wings send her diving once more for cover.

There’s a rush of air, like something falling, followed by a thump and a faint squeak. Then silence.

Sarah counts out a minute in frantic heartbeats, ears straining for any further sound. Then, rising to her knees she leans forward and peers around the bush which conceals her, directly into a pair of saucer-like eyes.

Sarah freezes.

The creature before her is small, and shaped kind of like double scoop of ice cream, if scoops of ice cream came covered in brownish fur. The fur on the body-scoop is thick enough to conceal any limbs or appendages apart from the two webbed feet which protrude from under its bulk. Its head-scoop is adorned with two sail-like ears, a twitch of a nose, and those impossibly enormous eyes, which stare unblinkingly at a spot about two feet to Sarah’s left.

Cautiously, she turns her head. Nothing but a few scrubby plants and a couple of yards of stagnant pond water, bounded by the ubiquitous green hedge. She looks back to the creature. Its gaze has not wavered. If it has noticed her presence at all, it gives no sign.

Careful not to stir so much as a leaf, she withdraws once more behind the bush. The creature doesn’t look likely to be fast on its feet—if she goes right, she can probably make a break for it and lose it somewhere in the turns of the Labyrinth.

But why should she? She came here to find information, not to wander a bunch of empty corridors and bolt like a startled rabbit at the first glimpse of another living being. 

Moving slowly, keeping her body open and unthreatening, she emerges from behind the hedge.

The little creature’s head snaps round to face her, its pupils expanding and contracting like the lens of a camera.

Sarah clears her throat. “Um. Hi.” Then, receiving no response: “Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

The creature says nothing.

_Doesn’t it ever blink?_

“I’m Sa—ah, um. Searching. For something. I was wondering if you might be able to help me?”

Does it even understand speech? Last time, everything she’d encountered had seemed to speak and understand English, but this time around, things are plainly a little different.

Maybe she’s just taking the wrong approach. If there’s one thing the Goblin King has taught her about his world, it’s that few things come without a price.

Hastily, she casts her mind about for a bargaining chip. Delving into her pockets, she comes up with a handful of slightly crushed nuts—the remains of Nina’s cashews.

“Tell you what, why don’t we have a trade? You share some information with me, and in return, I’ll share some of my delicious snacks.” She pops a cashew into her mouth and chews theatrically, molding her face into a mask of enjoyment.

“Mm, yum!" She swallows, smacking her lips. "Now you have one.”

Still keeping her movements slow, she reaches out a hand and tosses one of the nuts. It skitters along the ground and comes to rest about a foot in front of the creature.

The creature stiffens, its gaze snapping to the nut, but, after a few moments, it relaxes and waddles forward a few steps. It bends forward, slowly, face to the ground, the curve of its body resembling nothing so much as a fur-covered slinky. Then it straightens. The nut is gone.

“Good, right? How about another one?” She extends her hand. The creature looks from it to her face, then back to the nut. “I promise I don’t bite,” she says, putting a smile into her voice.

The creature’s gaze continues to flicker, back and forth and back again. Its ears droop piteously.

“Nothing to be scared of,” Sarah says, reassuringly. “Here.” She rises on her knees and shuffles forwards a few inches.

This is a mistake.

The creature rears back, ears flying out like the wings of a plane. Its scoop-like head sinks into its shoulders with a mechanical sounding _clunk_ , and then, incredibly, begins to spin, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. Sarah scrambles to her feet as a sound emerges from that blur of brownish fur—something like an air-raid siren, deafeningly loud and climbing in pitch. She starts to run.

From a distance, she hears shouts and the clamor of armor. Green corridors flash past her, the cobbles blurring beneath her feet. There’s a whoosh of air, and she ducks just in time as with a cry, a great bird swoops down, missing her scalp by scant inches. She throws her arms across her head, looking desperately for cover as the shadow wheels and the bird plunges down for another pass.

Sarah lunges forward, but her feet are suddenly on unstable footing. The ground itself seems to rise up beneath her, and then she’s hurtling headlong into the hedge. She puts up an arm and turns away her face—

Only it seems she’s miscalculated, because instead of catching herself against a wall of leaves and branches, she keeps falling. Sarah hits the ground shoulder first and rolls to the side, expecting at any moment the scream of victory, the slash of claws. 

It never comes. The only pain she feel is the bright ache of her shoulder; the only sound, her own labored breathing.

Sarah pushes herself up and looks around.

She’s all alone in a green passageway about eight feet wide and half again as tall.

The walls are a dense mass of greenery, shrubs and saplings and young plants all growing together. Branches come together over top to form an arched canopy, filtering sunlight but blocking the sight of the sky. It's almost as if, Sarah thinks, she's _inside_ the hedge, and someone has carved out a tunnel through the center of it. But for that to be the case, the hedge would have had to grow much, _much_ taller and wider. Or—with a rush of sudden alarm—she would have had to have grown much _smaller_.

She turns, shoving against the wall. Twigs catch at her hair, unseen thorns pricking at her skin as her questing hands meet an impenetrable lattice of trunks and branches. She tugs at the branches, testing their weight—if she can't force her way through here, maybe she can climb up to where the branches are thinner—and the hedge seems to contract, pinching her fingers between the trunks.

Sarah pulls back, panting and battered, but not beaten. If she can just pull away enough of the twigs and lesser greenery, she should be able to either break or climb the larger branches. As for the scratching and the squeezing— She unties the button-down around her waist and, after a brief hesitation, peels off her tank-top. As quickly as she can—she _really_ doesn't want to be caught trespassing in the Labyrinth in nothing but jeans and a bra—she puts on the button-down, then, grasping one edge of the tank-top between her teeth, tears it into two roughly even rags.

Almost as if it senses her intent, the tunnel begins to darken as branches thicken overhead. A low susurration runs through the undergrowth, and the trees creak menacingly.

Sarah ignores it, wrapping the rags around her hands and tying them off with her teeth.

The passage grows chill as the trees seem to draw closer. Sarah ignores them, but the tunnel is rapidly approaching a sort of twilight as branches meet and mesh, blocking out the daylight. Wood squeals and groans, pressing towards her at an alarming rate as seedlings poke through the ground at her feet.

Branches reach down from the canopy above, scraping along her scalp and tangling themselves in her hair. She reaches up to free herself, but her half-bound hands are clumsy. More branches have joined the first, trapping her hair in a tightening web. Try as she might, she can't seem to tug free.

Almost sobbing with fear and frustration, she takes a step back, bracing herself for an almighty yank, only to trip on a root that swells through the ground at her feet. The branches release her and she drops, landing painfully on the earth. The air down here is thick and moist and she struggles for breath, nostrils choked with the scent of chlorophyll and rich earth. It's almost completely dark now, but all around her she hears it—the sound of rank and sickly verdancy—of monstrous growth.

She shrinks in on herself, and the trees follow, vines twining around her legs. Gasping, she arches her back as a rapidly growing sapling shoots up under her shirt, its budding branches scraping like fingernails up her spine. Leaves close in around her, whispering against one another and caressing her face. Buds open, filling the air with a cloying perfume as some great, multifoliate flower opens its petals against her neck like a kiss.

“All right!” The words are torn from her throat in that instant of sensual horror, of unsought, unnatural touch. “All right, all right, whatever you want, just leave me alone, just _stop—_ ” and then she's choking as the leaves enter her mouth and then—

Silence. Light. Air.

Sarah opens her eyes to find that she's lying curled in the middle of the tunnel, cheek pressed to the earth and face wet with tears. The hedges and trees arch above her, distant and sedate.

“Oh, _fuck_ you.”

She pushes herself into a seated position and spits onto the earth, trying to rid her mouth of that persistent, vegetable taste.

“Was that necessary?” she calls out, her voice shaking.

Silence.

Sarah rips off the makeshift gloves and shoves them in her back pocket, scrubbing her hands over her face. Then she takes a deep breath, and clambers to her feet.

“Don't you dare try to pull anything like that again, do you hear me? Don't you _dare_.”

More silence, but the grass and weeds around her curve away from her, as though some faint, intangible breeze were emanating from all sides. There's something about their gently bowed forms that seems almost...contrite. Apologetic.

Unless, of course, as seems entirely possible in this moment, she is actually going totally out of her fucking mind.

Sarah glances around at the trees. “You _can_ understand me, right?” she asks, hating the quaver in her voice.

A rustle of affirmation.

“Awesome. Super.” Sarah presses the heel of her hand to her forehead and heaves a shaky sigh. “Well, what exactly do you want?”

A shiver goes down the length of the passage, a fluttering of leaves and branches that starts to Sarah's left and rolls past her like a wave, disappearing into the distance.

“Sorry, didn't quite get that.”

Another shiver, although this time the leaves are moving in an actual, tangible breeze. It sends strands of hair fluttering across her face, and little twigs and stones skittering across the tunnel floor.

“Yeah, still not sure what you're trying to tell me,” Sarah says, using her fingers to comb the remaining twiglets and leaves from her hair.

A blast of icy wind barrels down the passageway, knocking Sarah back several steps. Grimly, she raises a hand, trying to hold her place but the pressure of the wind is too much to bear, and she's forced to back up another step. Instantly, the wind drops.

Realization dawns.

“You want me to go this way?” she asks, pointing to the right.

A breeze ruffles her hair in a gentle affirmative.

She takes a few more steps down the corridor, then stops.

“Hang on, though, I remember how this works. It's never the way you think it should be. Which means I should _really_ be going left.”

Another gust of wind hits her from out of nowhere.

“Cut that out!”

The wind picks up, whipping around her ears and teasing her hair from its ponytail, always pushing, pushing—

“I mean it! I won't be bullied!”

The wind abates slightly.

“Good! Now, you can settle down so we can discuss this _reasonably,_ or I'll stand here and wait until you do.”

The wind blasts her full in the face, but Sarah doesn't budge, standing with her arms folded and her eyes screwed up tight, waiting it out. Gradually, it peters out to the barest of breezes.

Sarah glares up at the canopy of trees. “Christ, I'd forgotten how _pushy_ this place can be.”

Silence.

She sighs and rubs her forehead. “I need a smoke,” she mutters.

Something drops from above, striking her on the forehead.

“Ow.” Sarah rubs her forehead, crouching down to see whatever it was. As she bends down, something else strikes her on the top of her head and slides off. She pivots, snatching up it from where it landed on the ground. A plain book of matches. Turning, she finds the original projectile before her: a (now slightly battered) pack of Winstons.

At least, they appear at first glance to be Winstons, but a closer inspection of the label reveals that the familiar golden eagle has been replaced by an owl in flight.

“Cute,” she mutters, canting her eyes up towards the canopy.

The pack seems to grow warm in her hand. Looking down, she sees that the name on the label has changed from Winston to _Winsome_.

She narrows her eyes. “There's such a thing as _too_ cute. Anyway, I appreciate the thought, or whatever, but I'm not smoking your weird, magic cigarettes. I had enough of that in college, thanks.”

The pack heats again, sharply and suddenly, enough to make her yelp. Glancing down, she sees that the pack now reads _Willsome_.

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

She sighs. It's not _impossible_ that that isn't some sort of trick. It probably wouldn't actually kill her to be polite to otherworldly, tobacco-distributing tunnels, especially when she's in the middle of trying to teach them the benefits of civil persuasion.

“Maybe later though. Thanks.”

Another brief blossom of warmth. If temperature could convey a sense of smugness—which it almost certainly _couldn't—_ this would. _Welcome_ , says the label.

Sarah snorts and tucks the pack in her breast pocket.

“So,” she says. “Talk to me. Or…whatever it is that you do. You want me to go right. In my experience, going the way I'm supposed to in this place nearly always ends in disaster. So why should I listen to you now?”

From behind her comes an earth-shaking _crash_. Sarah whirls around to see an enormous tree trunk lying across the disfavored path. The tree is far too large to be part of the structure of the bower, and has, in its falling, knocked great holes in the hedge to either side. Sarah starts forward, hoping for a glimpse of the Labyrinth beyond, but she's too slow. The holes are already being plugged with rapidly growing verdure, all sprouting twigs and snaking vines.

Her flesh crawls in recollection, and she turns away.

“Give me some reason that isn't a threat,” she says loudly and firmly.

For a moment, nothing. Then, from somewhere to the right a faint noise, like a tea-kettle going off very loudly and very far away.

She takes a step towards the noise, striking her foot painfully against something raised and solid on the ground. Something which had most definitely not been there only a moment before.

Crouching down and clearing away the grass and weeds, she uncovers a long, metal bar, rising several inches off the ground and bolted to a wooden plank.

The bar is buzzing.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

The whistle comes again much closer now—unmistakably the sound of an old-fashioned steam engine.

Sarah scrambles to her feet. The tunnel is only just wide enough for a train to pass through. If she can't find some kind of cover...

For the second time that day, she throws herself against the walls of the passage, desperate for an exit—for some avenue of escape—but they're as impenetrable as ever.

The train barrels down the track towards her, its wheels on the track rumbling like thunder.

She runs down the track in the other direction, towards the fallen log, and begins trying to climb, but the tree is chest-high and surprisingly slippery.

The train is getting closer. She can feel the hum of the rails down to her very bones. She screws her eyes shut and waits for impact—

Impact never comes.

Opening her eyes, she sees the train waiting a few feet in front of her, patient and eager as a Labrador retriever. The whistle hoots twice, signaling the all-aboard.

She lets out a trembling breath, straightens her shirt, and, wiping a few stray tears from her face, shoots another deadly glare up at the canopy.

“I hate your sense of humor,” she mutters, and climbs aboard.

She fancies she hears an answering purr from the engine before the train takes off down the track, back in the direction from which it had come, moving at a brisk but far more sedate pace.

Sarah leans over the back of the rail, watching as the tunnel recedes and the tracks fade away into the green. But that fading, she realizes with an unpleasant jolt, isn't just the result of distance. Before her eyes, the weeds and grasses are creeping back over the rails, hiding them from sight. She shudders, the memory of that lush, unnatural proliferation still fresh in her memory.

“Creepy,” she mutters.

The train gives a little lurch of indignation.

“Yes, _you_ ,” she tells it, clutching the railing for support. “Don't think I forgot your nasty little trick with the trees earlier.”

The wheels on the track rumble disgruntledly.

After fifteen minutes or so (time is hard to estimate without a watch), Sarah gets tired of standing and watching a landscape of undifferentiated green, and enters the carriage. To her surprise, she finds it quite nicely furnished, with comfortably overstuffed leather seats and polished tables of solid oak, each set with a cut-glass ashtray. There's even a jukebox. She wonders if this is someone's idea of apology, and if so, how she feels about it.

She ignores the ashtrays, unsure whether or not they represent a nice gesture or another example of Labyrinthine pushiness. Either way, she has no intention of putting magically produced cigarettes into her body. Imagine being like Persephone and having to spend one twentieth of your life Underground because you hadn't been able to wait for a nicotine fix.

She does, however, make use of the jukebox, which has a surprisingly decent music selection. Amazing, how much easier it is to ride inside an anthropomorphic train controlled by some unknown power that apparently thinks attempted murder makes for a hilarious practical joke when you’re doing it to the sounds of “Don't Stop Believin'.”

Sarah gets through six more jukebox plays before the train finally comes rattling to a halt. The door swings open and she carefully climbs out.

The landscape she sees is virtually indistinguishable from any that has gone before it, a textured swath of eye-watering green. Sarah notes with an irritating surge of apprehension that they seem to have reached the end of the passage—unless she finds a way off the tracks, the only way out for the train will be through her.

“So what now?” she wonders aloud.

The train gives a little hoot in response and Sarah jumps. She’d half-forgotten that it was—her mouth pulls at the strangeness of the thought—that it was listening.

“I think you’ve misplaced your station,” she says.

The train lets out another whistle, low and long, like a sigh. Then it begins to rumble back down the track towards her.

“Hey!” Sarah scrambles backwards. “Hey, cut that out! I thought we were _done_ with this shit!”

The train, unsurprisingly, ignores her, shunting her another three yards up the passage before grinding to a halt.

“And what exactly— Oh.”

Because there it is, an opening in the green. The angle had hidden it before, but now she can plainly perceive the mouth of a second tunnel, blessedly free of tracks.

“You couldn’t have dropped me off here in the first place?”

No answer.

 _Typical_.

Sarah takes a step towards the passage, then turns back to look at the train.

“Well,” she says, and stops. You sure as hell didn’t thank someone for kidnapping you, and ‘be seeing you’ might be taken as an invitation. She clears her throat. “Bye, then.”

Not so much as a whistle.

Sarah sighs and steps into the passageway. Behind her, the train rumbles to life, and she turns to watch it disappear back down the track. Shaking off a small and utterly inexplicable pang, she squares her shoulders and starts off down the passage.

The passage is short, but what initially appears to be a dead end is revealed, as Sarah approaches, to be a pair of massive double doors, apparently fashioned from a mix of wood and metal, but so overgrown with creepers and ivy that it’s difficult to be sure.

Sarah eyes the doors speculatively. “I’m guessing you want me to go through?” she says, glancing towards the leafy canopy for affirmation.

Silence.

“What? Nothing to say for yourself?” She pulls out the slightly battered packet of cigarettes. “What about you?” she asks it. “Any wisdom to share?”

The words on the label appear to shimmer for a moment as the pack heats in her hand.

 _Wisdom_ , they read, an inquiring tilt to the letters, as if to say, “who, me?”

Sarah snorts, and tucks the pack back into her pocket.

“Well,” she says, “come on feet,” and, pushing the doors open, steps inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Labyrinth plays rough, you guys. It’s low-key my favorite character.
> 
> Also, does Sarah have the cheesiest taste in music or what? The early nineties were hell for her—imo the real reason it took her so long to fall off the supernatural bandwagon was that from ’91 to ’94, she was too busy trying to fake an appreciation for grunge. A person can only live so many double lives at once. You know all that college time we glossed over in Chapter 6? Picture a two-minute continuous take of Sarah unconvincingly headbanging to “Heart-Shaped Box,” and, like, yeah. In a nutshell.
> 
> Various inspiration for this chapter comes from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, The Hobbit (the novel, Laura, you heathen), and Alice in Wonderland. Visual references for this chapter may be found at this [pinterest](https://www.pinterest.co.uk/whenasinsilksinsp/tithe-chapter-11/), but include the Tunnel of Love in Ukraine for the train bit and Quinta da Regaliera for everything forever. Vaguer inspiration comes from surrealist art. Which surrealist art, you ask? Yes. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left kudos and to Polarbaroness, 73880, junk, mewcowardlylion, Anisky, allthegoodnamesaretakendammit, Norehnka, Chiaroscurous, zeco5000, KaelsMiscellany, T_Thornton, MsZia, and siren for reviewing!
> 
> Songs:  
> “Woodstock,” by Joni Mitchell (CSNY cover, no playin)  
> “Out of Nowhere,” by Wye Oak  
> “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns ‘n’ Roses (this was so close to being the title song of this chapter)  
> “Freight Train,” by Peter, Paul & Mary (I love this because it makes me picture an old-timey cartoon train with a big ole smile chugging down the track and swaying to the music, and inside there's Sarah absolutely fuming like "You think you so fukkin cute." It does. It does think it so fukkin cute.)
> 
> Happy holidays/generalized wintertimes, and I'll be back with another chapter in the new year! In the meantime, if you enjoyed, please drop a line and let me know, here or on [tumblr](http://whenas-in-silks.tumblr.com/)!


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